A Framework for Government Response to Social Media Participation in Public Policy Making: Evidence from China

ABSTRACT

This article develops a conceptual framework to understand government response to citizens’ social media participation in public policy making and identifies four participation-response archetypes: the Ostrich, the Cuckoo, the Queen Bee, and the Mandarin Duck modes. Drawing on analysis of 136 cases in China, the Cuckoo mode, in which public opinions are pre-expressed and government is reactive, was the predominant response observed. Incidents of the Ostrich mode, avoiding or denying citizen voice, occur but are declining, while the Queen Bee mode of government-led communication is increasing. The Mandarin Duck mode, characterized by high levels of online political participation by both citizens and government, was rare. The four modes offer a way of classifying government response to social media political participation and enable governments to more effectively integrate the views of citizens into the policy-making process.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• political participation
• public policy making
• government response
• digital engagement
• china

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Social media political participation draws on Castells (2000) concept of political participation.

2. A BBS, electronically mimics a physical bulletin board where messages can be exchanged. The digital version is more flexible with wider reach so that messages and files can be shared.

3. Sina Weibo is similar to Twitter, in which users post messages of up to 140 characters to their account page or ‘profile’.

4. These nine biggest Chinese virtual communities include five BBS, Tianya BBS, Kaidi BBS, Qiangu BBS, Sina BBS and ChinaNet BBS; two micro-blogs, Sina Weibo and Tengxun Weibo (micro-blog); and two social network sites (SNS), Kaixin SNS and Renren SNS.