Social Media and Local Government: Citizenship, Consumption and Democracy

Abstract

This article seeks to assess and understand the role played by new forms of internet-based communication in UK local governance. Drawing on a survey of all English local authorities the article examines the utilisation of social media before going on to ask what potential these media might hold for the enhancement of local participation. Amidst contemporary debates about the nature of local governance, not least those prompted by the recent preoccupation with the Big Society, Web 2.0 platforms such as Facebook and Twitter afford new opportunities for online interaction that could contribute to the reinvigoration of the local public sphere. In particular these platforms could encourage forms of participation that would bridge the divide that has emerged in recent years between residents as consumers of local services and residents as citizens, or local democratic actors.

Key Words:

• Citizenship
• consumption
• local authorities
• participation
• social media
• Web 2.0

Notes

1. The City of London was excluded from the analysis because it is a non-elected body and therefore has no ‘democratic’ relationship with citizens. The Greater London Authority (GLA) was also excluded. Although the GLA has an elected assembly and mayor, and acts as a strategic regional authority with responsibility for such services as the police, economic development and public transport, its functions have no exact parallel in the universe of English local authorities, being neither similar to single tier county councils nor to the various forms of unitary authority that exist in England. The GLA makes use of social media, but its exclusion does not affect the findings from our survey of county, district, metropolitan and unitary authorities.

2. It should be noted that Facebook itself has generated a basic page for every council in England by simply adding information from Wikipedia. These pages are not created by the council concerned and do not indicate that it has an official Facebook presence; in all likelihood it is the product of automatic software ‘scraping’ of Wikipedia information.

3. Such conversational spaces are owned by Facebook (or the social media platform concerned) so that while the manager of a page might be able to delete a post that data will always exist. While this level of detail may not concern a non-governmental organisation (NGO) or residence group it could constitute a problem for government bodies that may be more concerned about the ownership and control of spaces where they engage with citizens. Indeed this may point to the need to develop SNS platforms specifically tailored to democratic deliberations.