Government innovation through social media

Social media in government is becoming one of the major trends in Electronic Government (e-government) research and practice worldwide. During the last few years, several authors have addressed the potential of social media for the innovation of public sector organizations. Most of these contributions have focused on the technical dimensions of social media, while other aspects have not attracted equal attention. In contrast, this introductory article interrogates the role of social media in the basic areas of e-government: government information flows and the availability of government information; the use of information technology to create and provide innovative government services; the impact of information technology on the relationships between the governed and those governing; and the increasing importance of information policies and information technologies for democratic practices. Accordingly, the next few pages propose and develop three dimensions of social media in government: tools, goals, and topics. We think that these dimensions could help to better understand the use of social media in government settings. Then, after a brief review of current trends in social media and government research, we present the articles included in this special issue. Finally, we present some practical lessons and suggest ideas for future research. This special issue could be seen as a starting point for the development of innovation through social media in public administrations around the world.     

The Presence of Academic Health Sciences Libraries on Facebook: The Relationship Between Content and Library Popularity

Social networks such as Facebook allow libraries to be proactive in reaching their users. While some libraries have popular Facebook pages, it remains unclear what attracts users to these pages. This study evaluates relationships between libraries’ Facebook page content and popularity. An analysis of 72 academic health sciences libraries’ Facebook pages showed positive correlations between number of library fans and number of tabs, photos, events, and wall posts on Facebook. Libraries posting videos had significantly more fans than libraries without them. This study contributes to an understanding of correlations between content and popularity on Facebook, with implications for library outreach.     

Pre-service teachers’ and teacher-educators’ experiences and attitudes toward using social networking sites for collaborative learning

Extensive use of social networking sites by students and teachers makes educators and researchers to think whether they can be incorporated in instructional process to facilitate students’ learning. This survey-based study records and examines Pakistani pre-service teachers’ and teacher-educators’ current uses of Facebook, and their attitudes toward using Facebook for collaborative learning, and to see if there is a significant relationship between participants’ intensity of Facebook use and their attitude toward instructional use of Facebook. Results of the study indicated that pre-service teachers’ and teacher-educators’ motives for their current Facebook use are mainly limited for social purposes. Pre-service teachers’ use of Facebook is more intensified than the use of Facebook by teacher-educators. Further, pre-service teachers showed more positive attitudes toward using Facebook for collaborative learning than the attitudes of their faculty. Findings also indicated a positive relationship between participants’ Facebook intensity and their attitudes toward its use for collaborative learning.     

News Media's Rhetoric on Facebook

ABSTRACT

While Facebook is an important distribution channel for today's media houses, there is a lack of research on how news outlets choose to present their stories in social media. The present study aims to narrow this gap by analysing two weeks of Facebook updates by the Norwegian tabloid Dagbladet and the public-service broadcaster NRK and comparing them to the corresponding stories on their news sites. An important objective is to uncover if and how the Facebook updates depart from established text norms for online papers. The method is triangulated. A quantitative content analysis reveals that newsrooms tend to utilize a wider range of speech acts when writing presentations specifically for Facebook. A follow-up qualitative analysis identifies five rhetorical strategies for unique promo texts on Facebook: adding emojis, posing questions, making requests, expressing emotions and stating subjective points of view. Qualitative interviews with responsible journalists confirm that these strategies are more common the less controversial the stories are. However, the newsrooms have few explicit guidelines for when it is acceptable to transgress traditional journalistic text norms. The findings are summarized in a model that connects the continuum of decreasing story controversy to a corresponding continuum of increasingly interpretative and subjective rhetoric.     

Students' Perceptions and Communicative Management of Instructors' Online Self–Disclosure

Computer-mediated communication has become one of the many teaching strategies used to enhance students' cognitive and affective learning. What happens, however, when instructors use the Internet for personal purposes, such as staying in touch with friends and sharing gossip? This study investigated how college students perceive and communicatively manage their instructors' private information after viewing these profiles. An interpretive analysis of 21 interviews with college students confirmed previous research regarding student perceptions of instructors' self-disclosure, and students reported the information online impacted their communication with the instructor in various ways. Implications and future research suggestions are discussed.     

Investigating Relations Between Facebook Use and Social Capital Among College Undergraduates

This article examines relations between Facebook® (FB) use and social capital among 530 undergraduate students. The results demonstrated that using FB habitually was associated with gains in online bridging and offline network capital. This study also examined 2 motivations for using FB: the motivation to socialize with others and the motivation to improve one's status. Results showed that using FB for sociability reasons was associated with increased online bridging and bonding. Using FB more for status than for sociability was not associated with decreased online bridging and bonding. Finally, the results provided evidence of the sociability motivation mediating the relationship between FB habit and online bridging and bonding. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

Creativity workshops in the regular classroom

Facebook is a frequently accessed social networking site with more than one billion active users worldwide. Although there are numerous studies on its impact on teenagers, none have investigated its impact on gifted and talented girls. This study’s aim was to understand the social media experiences of talented female student leaders. A qualitative approach, underpinned by the principles of phenomenology, was used. Individual semistructured, in-depth interviews were conducted with five participants. A modified method for phenomenological analysis was then used to distill the key essence of their experiences. This New Zealand study describes the complex challenges the participants face as users of Facebook and also argues for the value of the phenomenological method as a powerful research tool in such a study.     

Students’ educational use of Facebook groups

The aim of the article is to explore educational use of student-managed Facebook groups in upper secondary education (in Denmark). Much research on educational potentials of Facebook has studied groups managed by teachers. However, there is a lack of in-depth research on Facebook groups managed by students and without participation from teachers. As this study shows, students’ use of student-managed groups differs from their use of teacher-managed tools such as learning management systems (LMSs). The article presents an empirical study based partly on a content analysis of 3139 posts and 15,018 replies within five Facebook groups, and partly on a questionnaire answered by 1463 students and 148 teachers. The results of the study show that whereas LMSs were seen by students primarily as institutional systems of the teacher, Facebook groups have an educational potential to be used by students for peer-to-peer learning.     

The social strategy cone: Towards a framework for evaluating social media strategies

Social media is growing rapidly. Providing both risks and opportunities for organizations as it does. The social strategy cone is developed for evaluating social media strategies. This framework comprises of seven key elements of social media strategies as based on a systematic literature review and case studies. The results of 21 interviews have contributed to the construction of the social media strategy cone for analyzing social media strategies. Three levels of maturity of social media strategy are proposed: initiation, diffusion and maturity. Initiation includes the key elements: ‘target audience’ and ‘channel choice’ while all case organizations studied payed attention to these elements. Diffusion includes the elements: ‘goals’, ‘resources’ and ‘policies’. Maturity adds the elements of ‘monitoring’ and ‘content activities’. Only 3 of the 9 organizations studied are in this phase of maturity. Although, theory suggests the importance of the element of ‘monitoring’ our research shows the need for more attention in practice.     

Social media campaigns,electoral momentum,and vote shares: evidence from the 2016 Hong Kong Legislative Council election

By studying candidates’ Facebook fan pages and rolling poll data during the Hong Kong Legislative Council election in 2016, this article aims at examining the relationships between candidates’ campaign performance on social media, electoral momentum, and vote shares. We contend that, under specific contextual conditions, social media campaigns could affect candidates’ momentum during the election period, which can in turn affect vote shares. We also examine how the relationships between social media performance and electoral momentum vary according to the candidates’ background characteristics, including age, political affiliation, incumbency status, and scale of the campaign of the political group to which the candidates belong. The results show that candidates’ social media performance can indeed predict vote shares indirectly via the mediation of electoral momentum. The predictive power of social media performance is stronger for pro-democracy candidates, incumbents, and candidates belonging to political groups with larger election campaigns.