Authorities don't tweet, employees do! (original) (raw)
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Organizations Don't Tweet, Employees Do!
The research presented in this paper explores government authorities' use of social media. An exploratory approach has been used to identify characteristics of online interactions over an extended period of time. The data consists of communications and interactions of Twitter accounts belonging to a multitude of Swedish government authorities, ranging from top-level accounts of formal agencies, to accounts belonging to employees stating a formal position at a government agency. The findings show that there is a large diversity in the characteristics of government accounts. The focus of the paper is to presents an account type typology that represents government authorities presence on social media services. The authors believes that acknowledging these differences are an important step in theorizing the role of social media in crisis communication and for future research on social media use in emergency and crisis management practices.
Governmental social media use for emergency communication
The possibility of crowdsourced information, multi-geographical and multi-organisational information flows during emergencies and crises provided by web 2.0 tools are providing emergency management centres with new communication challenges and opportunities. Building on the existing emergency management and social media literature, this article explores how institutions are using and adopting social media for emergency communication. By examining the drivers and barriers of social media adoption in two European governmental agencies dealing with emergencies, the paper aims to establish a framework to examine whether and how institutional resilience could be improved.
Lessons from Norwegian Emergency Authorities' Use of Social Media
2015
Social media has evolved along with expectations that organizations, including public authorities, would create more dialogue with citizens. This policy brief argues for, first, the importance for public authorities to listen to, follow up on and use social media users' responses and viewpoints to facilitate dialogue and organizational learning, and, second, the need to more systematically reflect on the causes, meaning, and consequences of the informal tone that some public authorities have come to use in social media.
Social media use by government
2011
Social media and online services with user-generated content (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube) have made a staggering amount of information (and misinformation) available. Government officials seek to leverage these resources to improve services and communication with citizens. Significant potential exists to identify issues in real time, so emergency managers can monitor and respond to issues concerning public safety. Yet, the sheer volume of social data streams generates substantial noise that must be filtered in order to detect meaningful patterns and trends. Important events can then be identified as spikes in activity, while event meaning and consequences can be deciphered by tracking changes in content and public sentiment. This paper presents findings from a exploratory study we conducted between June and December 2010 with government officials in Arlington, VA (and the greater National Capitol Region around Washington, D.C.), with the broad goal of understanding social media use by government officials as well as community organizations, businesses, and the public at large. A key objective was also to understand social media use specifically for managing crisis situations from the routine (e.g., traffic, weather crises) to the critical (e.g., earthquakes, floods).
Social media use by government: from the routine to the critical
2012
Social media and online services with user-generated content (eg, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube) have made a staggering amount of information (and misinformation) available. Government officials seek to leverage these resources to improve services and communication with citizens. Significant potential exists to identify issues in real time, so emergency managers can monitor and respond to issues concerning public safety.
Introduction to the special issue on Social Media and Government
Information Polity, 2021
Social Media (SM) have become a double-edged sword for governments in recent years. They can be a fast and reliable channel to share information, including emergency communication. At other times, SM can create severe problems. For example, the spread of fake news or conspiracy theories (e.g., related to COVID-19 and the vaccine) has gained momentum through various kinds of SM. Therefore, in an age of accelerating digital change, the study of SM and its relationship to government deserves attention. SM use by governments started as a new set of communication channels for officials looking for easy, accessible, and cheap media to share news and information about services with constituents, citizens, agency counterparts, and other service users. In the early days, government's SM channels included Facebook, Twitter, and/or YouTube, among others. Over time, this use has evolved into a more engaging and participatory channel for online interaction between users and public managers. It has expanded to many more formats and platforms, for example including WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Virtual and Augmented Reality. During crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, SM use by government officials, politicians, and
Journal of Public Affairs, 2019
Twitter has become a commonly used platform by both public and private organizations to assist with the dissemination of information related to disaster management. This research makes use of a mixed-method approach in determining the extent and manner in which Twitter is used to disseminate disaster management information by both public and private organizations. This research found that public organizations are bound by strict regulations resulting in a lower volume and smaller variety of disaster-related information being disseminated. The nature of an organization and the processes of decision making therein are suggested to influence the ability of an organization to successfully use Twitter as an effective tool for disaster management. Organizations in Thailand currently underutilize Twitter for disaster management, as neither public nor private organizations use Twitter as a multidirectional communication disaster management tool. 1 | INTRODUCTION In the age of the Internet of Things (Wortmann & Flüchter, 2015), social media has become a popular tool in both politics and public administration. Many studies have examined the role that social media plays in these fields, for instance, those of Dini, Saebo, and Wahid (2018), Hamajoda (2016), and Kasadha (2018). Twitter is a well-known social media application that has gained tremendous popularity (Statista, 2018), growing rapidly since its inception in March 2006. Statistics from Twitter indicate that in the third quarter of 2017, there were more than 330 million globally active monthly users. With offices spanning more than 35 countries around the globe, Twitter's mission is to provide an online platform that allows for the creation and spread of ideas and information without any barriers (Statista, 2018; Twitter, 2017). Twitter's functionality allows one to form a close network of users while also allowing for mass communication to a wide audience through the intricate linking nature of "hashtags." The use of Twitter by the private sector is largely focused on using the platform for marketing purposes, for example, public relations departments using the platform to gather information (Liu, Burns, & Hou, 2017). Bhattacharjya, Tripathi, and Ellison (2016) and Taecharungroj (2017) find the private sector's use of Twitter in marketing and public relations, logistics, and customer relations, respectively, resulting in a two-way communication between high-level management and those operating arms. The public sector makes use of Twitter for a number of reasons, such as stakeholder communication and the sharing of information
5 Days in August" – How London Local Authorities Used Twitter during the 2011 Riots
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012
This study examines effects of microblogging communications during emergency events based on the case of the summer 2011 riots in London. During five days in August 2011, parts of London and other major cities in England suffered from extensive public disorders, violence and even loss of human lives. We collected and analysed the tweets posted by the official accounts maintained by 28 London local government authorities. Those authorities used Twitter for a variety of purposes such as preventing rumours, providing official information, promoting legal actions against offenders and organising post-riot community engagement activities. The study shows how the immediacy and communicative power of microblogging can have a significant effect at the response and recovery stages of emergency events.
In disaster management, emergency services agencies such as police and state emergency services, are growingly using social media microblogging services as an additional channel to distribute information to the general public. How these emergency services agencies are using these social media channels is still insufficiently understood. This paper introduces Actor-Network-Theory as a means to understand the emergency services agency social media utilisation. Using the case of the Boston Marathon 2013 Bombing, we apply genre analysis in interpreting the Boston Police Department's social media communication to understand whether the disaster typology or the social media channel characteristics have an influence on the microblogging utilisation of the emergency services agency. The findings imply that both the social media channel characteristics and the specific characteristics of a disaster influence how a social media channel is utilised.