A framework for interpreting social media interactions in the public sector

doi:10.1016/j.giq.2013.05.015

Government Information Quarterly

Volume 30, Issue 4, October 2013, Pages 327-334

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2013.05.015 Get rights and content

Abstract

Social media applications are extending the information and communication technology landscape in the public sector and are used to increase government transparency, participation and collaboration in the U.S. federal government. The success, impact and performance of these new forms of bi-directional and networked interactions can provide insights to understand compliance with the mandate of the Open Government Initiative. Many government agencies are experimenting with the use of social media, however very few actively measure the impact of their digital interactions. This article builds on insights from social media directors in the U.S. federal government highlighting their current lack of measurement practices for social media interactions. Based on their articulated needs for measurement, existing rules regulating the extent of measurement practices and technological features of the main social media platforms, a framework is presented that traces online interactions to mission support and the resulting social media tactics. Implications for both researchers and practitioners are discussed.

Introduction

Social media use has become an accepted practice in the U.S. federal government and around the world. Following the Open Government Directive agencies are investing resources into working with third party platform providers to harness new technologies to increase citizen participation, collaboration, and transparency (The White House, 2009a, The White House, 2009b).

These new forms of digital interaction between government and its stakeholders create the potential to increase democratic engagement and reach online audiences who were not previously involved in policy making activities (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010). At the same time, government opens additional channels for the influx of large amounts of data about digital interactions, content, and expressed online sentiments that need to be analyzed and interpreted to understand to what extent they support government's mission (Lazer et al., 2009).

Many agencies are however reluctant to measure their online interactions, or are even prevented by their interpretation of existing laws and regulations. Investing human and social capital into the use of social media creates on the one hand the potential for government to access innovative knowledge from stakeholders that can help make governmental processes more effective and efficient. On the other hand, merely opening additional channels to broadcast information in order to inform the public, but not reacting to the public's sentiments and feedback loops that are accessible via social media might harm government's reputation. An important step in using the appropriate metrics therefore includes a deeper understanding of the social and behavioral challenges associated with the interpretation of social media data by public managers as well as social media professionals in government.

Drawing on the existing literature of social media use in government, broader e-Government discussions, as well as empirical evidence from in-depth, qualitative interviews with public managers in the U.S. Government, this article provides a developmental framework for measuring social media impact in the public sector. First, the article outlines the existing and accepted measurement techniques for e-Government services and contrasts them with social media use for online interactions with government stakeholders. The existing rules and regulations that are guiding social media use in the public sector are outlined as the basis for future measurement tactics. Based on the lack of limited measurement attempts by social media directors, a framework for including metrics, procedures, and outcomes is presented that aims to help both researchers and policy makers to measure and interpret social media use in the public sector.

Section snippets

Social media in the public sector

Over the past four years agencies and departments in the U.S. government's executive branch have started to use social media applications, such as Facebook fan pages, Twitter updates, YouTube videos, blogs and RSS feeds. As of May 2012, the 698 departments, agencies, and initiatives of the U.S. federal government have created 2956 Facebook pages, 1016 Twitter accounts, 695 YouTube channels, and 498 Flickr pages to promote their online content and connect to their stakeholders and audiences (

Steps toward institutionalizing social media

The more government agencies use social media, the clearer it became that the existing 2002 E-Government Act was limited to email interactions and relative static government website content (United States Congress, 2002). As an example, tracking website traffic or using persistent cookie technology in general is highly regulated in the federal government. A memorandum published in the year 2000 prohibits federal agencies to use persistent cookies to track citizens' visits to a government

Existing ways of measuring the success of e-Government practices

The existing research on e-Government measurement techniques focuses mostly on different types of online service delivery in the form of single case studies, or the extent and enumeration of interactive elements of a government agency's website. Measurement techniques include for example Melitski's four-step model to evaluate to what degree an agency's website is static, interactive, transactional or transformative (Melitski, 2003). These four dimensions help the author to understand the

Research design

Most of the usage of social media evolved in the form of early experimentation outside of the officially accepted ICT infrastructure and government employees have to abide by the existing rules and regulations that guide their online behavior (Mergel, 2013, Snead, 2013). Many new guidelines were developed in response to the apparent lack and uncertainty to what extent the existing email and web use guidelines cover the use of social media in government.

Case selection and context

In order to understand the information needs of government social media professionals when they use social media applications for their government agency, a qualitative approach was used to understand perceptions and internal approaches. For this purpose, social media directors of the departments and agencies in the executive branch of the federal U.S. government were interviewed. The sample includes all those departments in the executive branch who received the formal mandate as part of the

Data collection and analysis

Following Richards' (1996) approach, elite interviews included social media directors responsible for the strategic and managerial efforts of social media implementation as well as managerial oversight of administrative day-to-day digital interactions with the public. Their agencies' online interactions are highly visible in the form of social media newsfeeds, however the underlying strategy, day-to-day management, tactics, interpretation and changes to the existing tactics can only be accessed

Current state of impact measurement of social media activities in the U.S. federal government

At this time, most social media directors interviewed for this study highlighted that they do not actively measure what kind of impact their social media activities have. As one of the interview partners said: “I would call it ‘Return on Ignorance’ rather than ‘Return on Investment’ — we are not really measuring what we do right now.” Another social media director specifies: “We do web analytics here. The web analytics package we use is not necessarily sophisticated enough to measure [success].

Toward an Open Government framework for interpreting the impact of social media interactions

These findings clearly indicate an increasing paradox: While the Open Government Initiative mandates federal government agencies to engage in higher level online interactions to not only become more transparent, but also increase participation and collaboration, the actual planned interactions are very challenging for social media professionals in government. So far there is limited reflection to strategically plan out engagement activities beyond pushing government information out through

Implications for social media professionals in the public sector

Social media professionals in government have two important tasks in this early experimentation phase with social media metrics. First, they need to understand what data and interactions the current rules and regulations allow government agencies to collect. Second, measuring without goals will unlikely lead to the insights they want to gain. It is therefore necessary to understand how the use of social media applications as acceptable channels for interactions between government and its

Future research

Social media directors face the ambiguous situation in which only rudimentary measurement techniques are provided by third-party service providers and officially approved measurement dashboards are either not available or not affordable. At the same time, citizens are expecting reciprocity and near real-time responsiveness from government. In the absence of approved processes and metrics, this study has shown that government organizations revert to existing measurement techniques that are in

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Ines Mergel is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and The Information Studies School (ischool) at Syracuse University. She was previously a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Program of Networked Governance and the National Center for Digital Government. She teaches in the Master of Public Administration program courses on Government 2.0, New Media Management in the Public Sector, Networked Governance, and Public Organizations & Management. Her research interest focuses on informal networks among public managers and their adoption and use of social media technologies in the public sector. In particular, she studies how public managers search, share and reuse knowledge they need to fulfill the mission of their agency.

A native of Germany, she received a B.A. and M.B.A.-equivalent in business economics from the University of Kassel, Germany. She received a Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.) in information management from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and spent six years as pre- and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government where she conducted research on public managers' informal social networks and their use of technology to share knowledge.

^☆: Edited by Dr. Rorigo Sandoval-Almazan, Dr. J. Ignacio Criado, and Dr. J. Ramon Gil-Garcia.

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A framework for interpreting social media interactions in the public sector☆

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Social media in the public sector

Steps toward institutionalizing social media

Existing ways of measuring the success of e-Government practices

Research design

Case selection and context

Data collection and analysis

Current state of impact measurement of social media activities in the U.S. federal government

Toward an Open Government framework for interpreting the impact of social media interactions

Implications for social media professionals in the public sector

Future research

Government Information Quarterly

Government Information Quarterly

Government Information Quarterly

Government Information Quarterly

Government Information Quarterly

Government Information Quarterly

Government Information Quarterly

GSA signs deals for agencies to use social networking sites

NextGov, 03/25/2009

A ladder of citizen participation

Journal of the American Institute of Planners

Technology and public management information systems: Where have we been and where are we going

CDC eHealth metrics dashboard

Key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

First Monday — Peer Reviewed Journal of the Internet

How federal agencies can effectively manage records created using new social media tools

The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research

The social media navigator — GSA's guide to official use of social media

From e-government to social network government: Towards a transition model

E-government: The realities of using IT to transform the public sector

Managing Service Quality

Singapore to mine citizen sentiment online

Government analytics

GCPedia a success, says Government of Canada CIO. TechVibes.com<http://TechVibes.com>

Computational social science

Science

Testing the development and diffusion of e-government and e-democracy: A global perspective

Public administration review

Twitter donates entire tweet archive to Library of Congress

Capacity and e-government performance: An analysis based on early adopters of internet technologies in New Jersey

Public Performance & Management Review

Social media in the public sector: Participation, collaboration, and transparency in the networked world

A manager's guide to designing social media strategies in the public sector

Tools help agencies manage social media messaging

NextGov

Theoretical model of adoption process with application to social media practices in the public sector: Where the formal and informal organizations meet!

Public Administration Review