From 1.0 to 2.0: Swedish municipalities online

ABSTRACT

The current study examines the social media use of Swedish municipalities, detailing the potential relationship between traditional forms of e-government initiatives and social media engagement of municipal bodies. By bringing these two forms of digital politics together, a more valid measurement of the supply of online democratic tools for citizen engagement is suggested. Moreover, the potential variation in determinants influencing these two concepts is examined as well. The main results indicate that municipalities’ adoption of social media is related to the procuration of more traditional services through their Web sites. Hence, a tendency of a “rich-get-richer” effect is indicated. In this respect, drivers of the different types of government use of digital services are to some extent similar. According to previous research, population size has a positive effect on the studied phenomena. Somewhat surprisingly, however, other explanatory factors differ. For example, although socioeconomic factors appear to have a positive influence on more traditional forms of online services, previous ambitions of e-government development appear as important for social media adoption by municipalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital politics
• Internet
• municipality Web sites
• social media
• Sweden

Notes

1. The index is based on indicators being internally significant; an estimation of the Cronbach’s alpha for data reflecting 2012 gives a value at 0.778.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gustav Lidén

Gustav Lidén is an associate professor of Political Science at Mid Sweden University. His research examines the local political arena and is focused on public usage of digital politics.

Anders Olof Larsson

Anders Olof Larsson is an associate professor at Westerdals Oslo School of Arts, Communication, and Technology. Larsson’s research is mainly focused on institutional and organizational uses of the Internet and social media.