Government Social Media Engagement Strategies and Public Roles

Abstract

Through social media, public officials share information with the people they serve. Related scholarship has centered on open government goals such as transparency, participation, and collaboration to characterize such efforts, relying on the directional flow of information between government and community members, as opposed to the underlying message content as illustrated by public roles (i.e. public managers’ view of residents as customers, partners, or citizens). Hurricane Florence provides a critical case to examine how cities in three U.S. states leveraged public roles for engagement purposes. Content analysis of Facebook data from 62 cities reveals their customer and partner-oriented focus as evidenced by frequent customer service updates and coproduction prompts. Citizen involvement efforts were far less common; few cities convened conversations about their exposure to risk or discussed how to build stronger communities. In all, this article clarifies engagement opportunities based on public roles and more explicitly tethers social media content to foundational concepts in public administration.

Keywords:

• Social media
• public roles
• customers
• coproduction
• citizen involvement efforts

Notes

Acknowledgements

The article benefited from several contributions. Kirby Suntala, Gabrielle Parsson, and Alex Mills analyzed message content. Jose Mendez contributed to data analysis and the design of Figure 1 to illustrate the relationship between public roles and message types. The author thanks them as well as the journal’s editors and the anonymous reviewers for their guidance. The project was supported by Cleveland State University’s Office of Research and the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs.

Notes

1 These 2,358 posts include 1,851 messages written by the city and 507 shared posts written by other organizations such as state emergency management agencies and utility companies. Whether developed in-house or externally, social media managers assessed this information to be important enough to release publicly. Therefore, it warrants attention in this analysis.

2 A team of four researchers reviewed messages and added service coproduction guidance as a message type, based on their inductive reading of the messages.

3 Cities provided preparedness information—specifically insights regarding associated risks—well after the September 14 landfall (see Figure 3). This is in part due to the storm’s heavy rains and subsequent flooding in many areas that created a more dynamic operational environment.

4 The distinction between intelligence gathering and conversation starters has to with operational decision-making. Intelligence gathering occurs during response and recovery efforts. Information gathered informs operational decision-making. Therefore, residents participate as partners to improve the services provided in real-time (e.g., emergency response, recovery, public safety, etc.). Conversation starters serve other purposes. Officials may ask questions simply to generate comments—perhaps valuing comments as an engagement statistic or output. They may want to encourage residents to interact with each other to share protective action ideas or create a sense that they are helping each other to get through the incident. Citizen involvement efforts occur when officials convene more deliberative conversations which inform policymaking. In emergency management, policies might include future flood mitigation investments, new disaster plans, or other ways to increase community resilience.

5 Perhaps an extended period of observation may capture more evidence about citizen involvement efforts. However, Wukich (2016) accounted for a year’s worth of social media content from U.S. state emergency management agencies and found only a few attempts to convene deliberative conversations despite accounting for several large-scale disasters.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Clayton Wukich

Clayton Wukich is associate professor and MPA director at the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. He studies organizational theory, innovation, and behavior, and his research explores the role of information and communications technology in enabling various forms of participation and collaboration.