An Analysis of Japanese Local Government Facebook Profiles

Muneo Kaigo & Sae Okura University of Tsukuba

This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 25330394.

　 概要Start February 1, 2012

Management Municipal Govt. of Tsukuba (Civic Activities Dept.)

Target Area Tsukuba, Ibaraki

Social Experiment Profile

facebook.com/tsukuba.hiroba

　 Total・ Participants (Likes) 2667　 (Dec 6, 2016)

Current Demographics of Users

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Female Male

Tsukuba Ibaraki Other

• Is “2000” users the magic number?• 2011 – Twitter (Tsukuba)• 2014 – Facebook (Tsukuba)

• Establishment of a collaborative relationship between the public sector and the private sector is a vital issue. One way to mediate the government sector with the private sector is through social media such as the Facebook. Social media is one potential enabler of this kind of “Open Government” and expands possibilities for residents to be more involved in providing public services and affect policy decisions. Through a text mining of all available 425 Facebook pages run by Japanese local governments, this study examines how these social networking sites are being used by local governments to create a more collaborative relationship between the private sector and what policy areas tend to get more fans/followers and engagement on Facebook. This study found that the number of fans/followers and level of engagement of Facebook pages run by Japanese local governments are determined by policy areas.

Research Questions• RQ1: What is the major focus of local governments in Japan when

they use Facebook?• RQ2: What policy area focused by a local government Facebook page

accumulates more fans?• RQ3: What policy area focused by a local government Facebook page

accumulates more engagement?

Data Collection• To analyze the focus of each local governments’ Facebook page, we used a list

provided by the Regional SNS Research Group (Chiiki SNS Kenkyukai) that has a “List of local governments’ Facebook page in Japan. (1) prefectural governments, (2) municipalities in prefectural capital cities and designated cities (the redundant pages with prefectural governments were removed), (3) Tokyo’s 23 special wards, and pages put on news sites.

• A total of 466 Facebook pages are listed. We removed 38 pages that were defunct and 3 pages that were being operated by individuals, not governments. Through this process, we had a remaining total of 425 Facebook pages.

• Facebook Profiles• Data Extraction by Blockspring from July 7th, 2016 to July 15th, 2016

Analysis: KH Coder• Morphological analysis for the Japanese language utilizing the ChaSen morphological

analysis tool developed by the Nara Institute of Science and Technology• Determined co-occurrence patterns in the paragraphs of the text provided in the

Facebook profiles • The text is analyzed based on the following rules to enhance the accuracy of analyzing

Japanese.• (1) The words with inflections are taken out after they are changed to the basic forms.• (2) The general words that are used in any sentences such as postpositional particles

and auxiliary verbs are omitted from the target of analysis.• Only “nouns” and “suru verbs” (verb formed by adding "suru" to a noun in Japanese)

are counted because our main focus is to discover the policy areas that local governments are focusing on.

Results• Our study has discovered that Japanese local governments use Facebook for (a)

agriculture, (b) environment, (c) enterprise, (d) civic engagement, (e) employment, (f) agriculture and forestry, (g) industrial development, (h) sports, (i) childcare (j) art and culture, (k) tourism and (l) public relations as their focused policy areas. In answering RQ1, among these policy areas, community development and community promotion are the most common policy areas. In regards to RQ2 that makes an inquiry into which area of policy tends to accumulate more fans, employment, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, childcare, education, and learning were found to have a small-scale fan base, whereas tourism and public relations have a large-scale fan base. In regards to RQ3 that inquires which area of policy tends to accumulate more engagement, we found that most policy areas have low engagement, although childcare, education and learning have mid-size engagement and public relations had relatively higher engagement. We can also suggest that the number of fans do not influence the amount of engagement.

Results• For practitioners that operate local government Facebook pages, an

appropriate number of fans (fan base scale) according to each focus policy area can be suggested by the result of this study. Figure 6 illustrates the findings of this study on how the number of followers and engagement fluctuate depending on each policy area. In other words, this study found that the number of fans or followers and level of engagement are determined by the focused policy area.

An Analysis of Japanese Local Government Facebook Profiles

Muneo Kaigo & Sae Okura University of Tsukuba

mkaigo@japan.tsukuba.ac.jp