Old Blunders in New Media? How Local Governments Communicate with Citizens in Online Social Networks

Sara Hofmann, Michael Räckers, Daniel Beverungen, Jörg Becker University of Muenster – European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS) {becker; sara.hofmann; michael.raeckers; daniel.beverungen}@ercis.uni-muenster.de

Abstract Social media hold abundant opportunities for ser-

vice providers to interact with their clients. Whereas social media as sales channels have been studied ex-tensively in the Marketing literature, much less is known about the ways in which public sector organisa-tions capitalize on this potential. The purpose of this study is to explore how local governments utilize online social networks as a means for external com-munication. In a content analysis approach, we ana-lyse 2,522 postings on the Facebook profiles of three out of the ten largest cities in Germany. The analysis is mainly based on a coding scheme that was derived both from literature as well as from interviews with experts, and complemented with a quantitative analysis of the Facebook profiles of the 25 largest German cit-ies. We find that public administrations hardly make use of the opportunities these new media offer, yet.

1. Introduction

Social media increasingly permeate everyday life, offering a communication channel that is non-excludable, non-rival, versatile, and provide positive network externalities to those involved [1]. In particu-lar, online social networks enable their users to repre-sent themselves as digital personas, model their social relationships with others, and share digital content online. While Facebook as the currently leading online social network is about to welcome its 1 billionth member, companies as well as public sector agencies are beginning to capitalize on this trend also.

Organisations can tap into social media as digital complimentary assets [1] in order to improve their own operations. Businesses have started to discover the potential that social media provide as new communica-tion and interaction channels. Their business models currently range from publishing advertisements and dedicated brand or firm pages to offering transaction services and utilizing data on social media for cus-tomer relationship management. In contrast to this,

governments seem more hesitant to embrace social media as communication channels with their stake-holders. However, analogies to commercial businesses suggest that governments could utilize social media for providing public services to citizens as self-services, advertise themselves on the web, and communicate with networks of citizens online.

As opposed to commercial businesses, research on governments’ use of social media is still in its infancy.Previous research has insufficiently addressed the question of how governments utilize social media as communication channels with their clients and to what extend the characteristics of the public sector shape these interactions. In particular, the use of online social networks such as Facebook is a recent trend that hasnot been properly reflected upon in the academic dis-cussion. The E-Government Reference Library (EGRL 7.5), for example, contains only 21 articles in total that deal with e-government and social media, respectively. Therefore, in this study we investigate the following research question: “How do local governments exploit the opportunities of online social networks to improve their external communication?”

We approach this research question by analysing the Facebook profiles of the 25 biggest local govern-ments in Germany from which 12 are in Facebook at present. In addition, the information contained on the Facebook profiles of three of the biggest cities in this sample were manually coded using a coding schema that was developed based on a literature review as well as on expert interviews. Based on the findings we strive to identify prospects on how governments can improve the interactions with their clients in online social networks.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we discuss common deficiencies of gov-ernments’ traditional offline communication with their stakeholders and elaborate on the status quo of re-search on governments’ use of social media as interac-tion channels. In section 3, content analysis is pre-sented as the selected research method as well as a coding schema is derived. In section 4, results from coding information on the selected government Face-

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DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2013.421

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2013 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

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DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2013.421

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book profiles are presented, followed by an interpreta-tion in section 5. Section 6 contains a conclusion and research agenda.

2. Related Work

2.1. Common Deficiencies in Governments’ ‘Offline’ Communication

Much more than the private sector, local government agencies as public sector institutions are responsible for ensuring citizens’ safety and well-being. In addi-tion, they are held accountable by the public for their actions to a special extend. Therefore, the provision of information to the public is a vital task for government agencies.

Due to a lack of competencies, many governments fail to communicate with both other governmental or-ganisations as well as with the public in the way they could. Liu and Horsley examine different reasons for governments’ lack of communication skills [2]. First of all, the management of public administrations often attributes a rather low importance to communications which may cause an internal devaluation of the com-munication task. Public relations positions in govern-mental agencies are often regarded as a low priority task that is commonly fulfilled by untrained employ-ees. This impedes professional development. Whereas private sector organisations have incorporated profes-sional communication departments, these units are often missing in public administrations. Furthermore, when governments communicate with the public, this is often not perceived by the receivers in the way it was intended. Poor public perception can reach as far as putting down governments’ information as propa-ganda. This bad reputation of governments’ communi-cation can in parts be attributed to the traditional use of mass communication. Such one-way communication does not allow for an appreciable public feedback, thereby impeding a fruitful dialogue between public and government [2].

However, it is very important for local governments to reach the public as the public sector is subject to high media scrutiny. Up to now, governmental com-munication has mainly taken place as mediated com-munication, i.e. government agencies have seldom been in direct contact with the public but most of their communication has been published via mass media like television, broadcast or newspapers [3]. In many cases, the media coverage has not been without bias. An analysis of the newspaper presentation of IT risks in e-government has shown that the reporting contributes to citizens’ negative attitude towards government behav-iour [4].

In order to counteract this negative image, it is ad-visable for governments to enforce their own commu-nication activities. Meanwhile, almost all local gov-ernments in developed countries have their own web-sites [5] which they can use to communicate with the public. However, providing information via a website has been found to be a rather ineffective communica-tion channel because it only reaches those citizens who visit the website on purpose. The emergence of social media like Facebook or Twitter with 901 million [6] respectively 140 million active users [7], on the con-trary, offers governments the opportunity to get in con-tact with the public in an environment “where the peo-ple are” [8].

2.2. Governments’ Communication in Online Social Networks

To some extent, governments have recognized the op-portunities provided by online social networks. The United Nations’ E-Government Survey 2008, for ex-ample, acknowledged the potential role that the so-called Government 2.0 can play for an effective two-way communication between governments and citi-zens. Even some developing countries have started to launch their own activities in order “to take advantage of Web 2.0 tools to interact with their citizens” [9].

Facebook profiles include all benefits rendered by traditional web 1.0 websites, on which governments merely provide information about their services and access to some public services [8]. Governments’ main reason for joining online social networks with a profile now is to address the public, i.e. the citizens in their daily environment [10], and so have the opportunity to reach a bigger audience than with their traditional online presences.

However, research on governments’ actual use of online social networks is limited, at best. Brainard & McNutt evaluated the interaction between the police of Washington, D.C., and its citizens in online discussion forums. They analysed the discussion structure and categorized the interactions either as informational or transactional or collaborative. Their results show that most of the content was in fact informational, whereas transactions were observed less and collaboration al-most not at all [11]. This suggests that the interactions between government and public have merely shifted to other communication channels, whereas the opportuni-ties presented by these channels still remain unex-ploited.

On the other hand, online social networks pose some challenges towards local governments. Among them ranges the processing of user-generated informa-tion posted by citizens on Gov 2.0 pages. The informa-tion published on Facebook, for example, seems to be

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extremely unstructured. It consists of different formats like text, pictures, video and audio elements or mash-ups. Despite the abundance of different data formats, most of the provided information is not related to the applications and services of the governments. Thus, local governments are faced with the need to identify the data that is useful for providing their services [10].However, local governments, too, have to consider what kinds of information they post in online social networks. 81% of Facebook users who had formerly been a fan of an organisation have already ‘un-liked’ a brand or removed a company’s post from their news feed. Their main reasons for so doing were too fre-quent and irrelevant postings [12].

This raises the question of how governments can successfully set up and run a social network page. Renaud calls for every governmental agency to launcha Facebook account that is used for publishing photos, blog entries, and announcements. He suggests that de-partment leaders receive training on how to handle the new media [13]. Lee & Lee Elser, too, acknowledge governments’ needs to develop a social media strategy as merely transferring the old web 1.0 habits to the particular context of web 2.0 media is not deemed promising [14].

2.3. Potential of Online Social Networks as Ex-ternal Communication Channels

Online social networks such as Facebook have a vari-ety of potentials to offer to an organisation’s external communication activities. Organisations usually create their own Facebook ‘pages’. Unlike personal profiles, these pages are not (publicly) related to a specific user but represent a whole brand or organisation. Further-more, Facebook pages can be accessed without logging onto, i.e. even non-members of the social network can access the information [8]. Being a Facebook user, one can ‘like’ the organisation’s Facebook page and thus receive their posted information directly on one’s per-sonal profile. According to a report that analysed the behaviour of a brand’s fans, 77% of users ‘liking’ a brand read their posts, news feeds and offers posted. 17% of them share experiences about the brand with other Facebook users and 13% post about the brand themselves [15]. Main reasons for users to become afan are self-expression, identification with the brand, to connect with like-minded people, to learn about the company and the products, to stay updated and tobenefit from exclusive offers [12].

Previous research has identified prospects that or-ganisations can capitalize on by setting up and running their own social network page. This discussion has remained limited to private sector organisations in most research papers. In the following, we review

these assertions to draw inferences for their applicabil-ity to local governments, as well.

1. Up-to-date information provision Unlike traditional media, online social networks al-

low for publishing information in near real time [16].Organisations can immediately react to any informa-tion published by third parties. In terms of creating transparency, which is especially important for gov-ernments also, they can use online social networks to publish messages to a general audience [17]. Public administrations are no longer subject to external media reporting but can actively publish their own informa-tion about current activities. Furthermore, in crisis situations like the spread of diseases or natural disas-ters, it is of special importance for governments to pro-vide up-to-date information.

2. Marketing In 2010, about $62 billion were spent on adver-

tisements in online social networks [18], which accen-tuates the growing importance that companies assign to this marketing channel. 51% of users say that they are more likely to purchase from at least some brands after having become a fan of their Facebook pages [15].Besides publishing generic advertisements, some “companies target individual consumers by using data-bases companies adjust personalized offer to custom-ers.” [18]. Possible forms of such personalized market-ing concepts include floating advertisements, trick banners, pop-up and video ads. After all, buying a product that is advertised on online social networks is just a few clicks away, enabled by e-Commerce sys-tems. Governments, on the other hand, are not depend-ent on generating revenue based on selling their ser-vices to citizens. Yet, they can make use of online so-cial networks to advertise their e-government services, like for instance, online car registrations.

3. Co-creation Besides analysing conversations between users in

order to generate turnover, organisations start to en-courage users of online social networks to actively participate in the development of service or product innovations [19]. “Users of these applications are no longer the passive consumer of content; they have be-come co-producers and co-creators.” [20]. These col-laborative processes are valuable for companies be-cause they are able to capture the consumers’ needs.Furthermore creating something by oneself enhances the customer loyalty of the consumers participating in co-creation. A similar rationale applies to local gov-ernments. Citizens can be asked to actively participate in the creation of new government services, finding solutions for problems in the community, or improving

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the delivery of public services online, which conse-quently increases the collective sense of community.

4. F-transaction Providing or gathering information is not the only

business model for companies on Facebook. Some organisations offer their users the opportunity to carry out complete business transactions via Facebook. Cus-tomers of Delta Airlines or EasyJet, for example, can book a flight integrally via the social network. Differ-ent levels of F-transaction exist. Whereas some trans-actions can completely be carried out on Facebook, some processes at least start on an organisation’s Face-book page but in the run of the transaction, the cus-tomer is redirected to another web site. Although Face-book commerce (F-commerce) is still in its infancy [21], such Facebook transactions (F-transactions) are also imaginable for e-government services. Of course, legal issues have to be kept in mind.

5. Recruiting for job seekers Instead of searching in traditional media like news-

papers, many job seekers nowadays turn to online so-cial networks when looking for a new position. Organi-sations can use these platforms as a cheap way to ad-vertise open positions including additional information or advert to online job exchange. Local governments, too, could benefit from this opportunity. Their employ-ees are known as the “graying workforce” since they often consist of many people shortly before pension [22]. Job offerings in social networks could help to attract younger job seekers, also.

6. Using multi-media features Communication in online social networks conveys

improved media richness [23], since it can include rich multimedia data such as pictures, videos, or hyperlinks. This might open up new potential for organisations to interact with their clients that were impossible to con-duct in offline communication. Consequently, the line of interaction between organisations and clients is shifting based on the design and deployment of self-services. These can be tapped into by local govern-ments as well, thereby improving operational effi-ciency and accessibility of service to clients who are willing and able to use these services. Additionally, Facebook posts including multi-media features can be used as eye-catchers drawing the users’ attention to the published information.

In addition to this, governments can exploit Face-book in further ways. Social media offer for example the potential for involving citizens more actively into government processes, called e-participation. Another possible – even though debatable – use of social net-

works could be their application in prosecution. How-ever, this article only focuses on online social net-works’ contribution to governments’ external commu-nication.

3. Research Method

In order to answer the question of how governments make use of social networks as part of their external communication, we analysed the Facebook presence of German local governments using content analysis. Content analysis is an often applied technique in social sciences to analyse both the manifest as well as the latent meaning of a message [24].

The coding schema is based on the identified ac-tions presented in section 2. In order to create the schema, we asked a group of 10 experts from the field of information systems which are acquaint with content analysis research and how they would measure each of the categories. All of the experts were postdocs or PhD students in the field of Information Systems and were familiar with Facebook themselves. We consolidated the answers and ranked the measures. We only in-cluded measures with a threshold of more than 50% of the answer sets in the final schema. The resulting measurements of how governments can exploit the potential of social networks to enhance their external communication are presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Coding scheme for governments’ stage of Facebook usage

Action Measurement of exploitation1. Up-to-date

information provision

a) Frequency of government’sposts*

b) Frequency of government’s comments*

c) Type of government’s initial posts (announce-ment/report/other)

d) Topicality of government posts (up-to-date/outdated)

e) Number of applicationsf) Number of posts including

links to external pagesg) Number of posts including

calendar events2. Marketing a) Number of posts on govern-

ment servicesb) Reference to government

services on info page3. Co-creation a) Number of government re-

quests for citizen involvementb) Reference to co-creation on

info page

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c) Number of polls*4. F-transaction a) Link to government website

on info pageb) Number of posts including

link to government websitec) Number of posts with applica-

tions directing to government website

d) Number of posts with applica-tions completely on Facebook page

e) Number of notes on a)-c)5. Recruiting a) Number of job offers posted

by governmentb) Reference to job offers/job

exchange on info page6. Multi-media

featuresa) Number of posts including

picturesb) Number of posts including

audio filesc) Number of posts including

video filesd) Number of posts including an

integration with other social media

During data collection, the measurements marked with an asterisk were analysed automatically via the officially provided Facebook API; the remaining cate-gories had to be coded manually.

The sampling unit was the official Facebook pages of the local governments of the 25 largest cities in Germany. Pages run by marketing or tourism compa-nies as well as pages moderated by individuals were not taken into account.

The coding unit was a single post. Of the 25 largest cities, 12 had launched a Facebook presence as of April 1st, 2012. We automatically collected statistical information from all those government pages including the date of the first post, the total number of posts and comments, the total number of “likes” as well as allassessment criteria marked with an asterisk. Further-more, we randomly chose three out of the ten largest cities that had an official Facebook page and conducted an in-depth analysis by coding the remaining qualita-tive categories based on the developed schema (cf. Table 1).

In order to avoid bias due to seasonal differences,we selected a whole year (1st April 2011 to 31st March 2012) as our period for this qualitative analysis. For preventing our results from being biased by our (un-conscious) opinions on governments’ status of social network usage, the coding was conducted by two per-sons different than the authors as suggested by Kolbe & Burnett [25]. The coding took place from April till

June 2012. We scheduled weekly meetings with the coders, which helped to increase both the inter-coder as well as the intra-coder reliability by discussing am-biguous posts and thus creating a common understand-ing. The inter-coder reliability in our analysis as meas-ured by 30 randomly chosen posts was 97.2%.

4. Data

In the following, we present an overview of the ana-lysed data discovered on the selected Facebook pages. The categories that were evaluated automatically (number of posts and comments both in total as well as published by the respective government itself and the number of polls) contain data from all of the 25 largest cities that have an official Facebook page whereas the remaining qualitative categories contain the data iden-tified on the pages of the three cities that have been selected for an in-depth analysis. For reasons of ano-nymity they are referred to as city A, city B and city C in the following. Table 2 shows the aggregated results for the coding scheme as well as results for the three selected cities in order to give an exemplary overview of the discrepancy between the different government pages.

On the reference day on 1st April 2012, twelve of the 25 largest German cities had launched an official Facebook page. Three of the pages were launched in 2008, one in 2009, six in 2010 and two government pages were from 2011. The mean number of posts for the period from 1st April 2011 to 31st March 2012 was 1,328, ranging from 108 to 4,042 with a standard de-viation of 1,121. The ratio of the governments’ own posts compared to posts by foreign users on a page was very heterogeneous with an average ratio of 3.2. Three Facebook pages only contained posts by the respective government and one page did not contain any post of the government at all. The mean number of comments per post was 1.1. On average, a government page was liked by 30,696 users.

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Table 2. Analysis of governments’ stage of Facebook usage1

Assessment criterion Total Mean Standard deviation

City A City B City C

General informationPosts in total*Comments in total*

15,94119,287

1,3281,607.25

1,121.771,749.41

4,0424,277

1,27530

9202,773

Government’s posts*Government’s comments*Type of posts

AnnouncementReportOther

Topicality of postsUp-to-dateOutdated

ApplicationsPosts including external linksCalendar events

5,5452,083

1,540585388

1,6742302,26519

462.08173.58

513.33195129.33

5587,6707556.33

357.93181.58

412.2391.9586.35

445.506.430497.544.16

327243

11612682

1135026111

12755

93925577

100415012565

920325

485204229

557307483

Posts on government servicesReference to gov. services on info page

326-

108.67-

100.67-

18yes

217yes

91no

Requests for citizen involvementReference to co-creation on info pagePolls*

14-

20

4.67-

1.67

3.51-

4.25

5no

0

1no

0

8no

1Link to gov. website on info pageLinks to gov. websiteApplications directing to gov. websiteApplications completely on Face-bookNotes on a)-c)

-1,61415

0

0

-5385

0

0

-436.062

0

0

yes983

0

0

yes9705

0

0

yes5467

0

0Job offers posted by governmentReference to job offers/job ex-change on info page

11-

3.67-

2.52-

1no

6no

4no

Posts including picturesPosts including audio filesPosts including video filesPosts including integration with other social media

21506689

71.6702229.67

73.19015.7241.00

470296

140477

1540336

1 Note: The categories that were evaluated automatically are marked with an asterisk. These categories contain data from all of the 25 largest cities that have an official Facebook page in the columns “total”, “mean”, and “standard deviation” whereas the qualitative categories contain the data identified on the pages of the three cities that have been selected for an in-depth analysis. All measures except for posts and comments in total only consider the posts published by governments whereas citizens’ posts are not considered in this analysis.

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5. Findings and Discussion

In the following, we present insights based on coding the content of the selected Facebook pages. We first of all will have a deeper look on the overall interactivity on the government pages (see Table 3), followed by insights based on the categories and coding schema developed in Section 2. Although this has to be taken with care, the interaction statistics can serve as an indi-cator for the success of a government’s Facebook ini-tiative.

Table 3. Results for interaction on posts related to government services

City A City B City Crelated to gov. service

all posts

related to gov. service

all posts

related to gov. service

all posts

likes 94.17 107.6 0.59 0.66 10.09 15.07com-ments 20.61 11.64 0.03 0.02 4.19 3.01#posts 18 327 217 1275 91 920

Interaction on the pages Contrasting the multi-facetted opportunities for in-

teractions on Facebook, users seldom like but more frequently comment on posts related to government services. Indeed, a more detailed analysis of posts at random suggests that most of the comments were more or less negative, i.e. these are e.g. posts on government decisions reported which then are commented on nega-tively. In a following coding step this could be further investigated.

Furthermore – and more general – we performed an in-depth investigation in which factors influence the activity and interaction of users on the governments’Facebook pages. As presented above, the administra-tions in our data sample used pictures (table 4), videos (table 5), or other multimedia content very sparsely in their posts. However, the data strongly suggests that using pictures and embedded videos fosters the interac-tions on the pages, since the likes and comments on these posts are considerably more frequent than text-only posts.

Table 4. Results for interactions with and without em-bedded pictures

allwith picture without picture all

likes 82.21 14.02 19.78comments 8.86 2.05 2.62#posts 214 2298 2522

City B made intensive use of the opportunity to in-tegrate Twitter feeds into their websites, featuring long tweets of up to 140 characters. This explains – against the backdrop of the data from other cities’ pages – the extremely low rate of likes and comments on their posts and shows the importance of a dedicated en-gagement with social media when using them as new and further channel of communication.

Table 5. Results for interactions with and without em-bedded videos

allwith video without video all

likes 84.73 18.11 19.78comments 10.88 2.41 2.62#posts 66 2447 2522

Apparently, posts that can neither be classified as an announcement nor as a report are perceived to be more interesting by the Facebook community, since significantly more likes and comments are spent on these “other” posts, which are for example competi-tions with prizes (table 6). This suggests that Facebook users are more interested in fun and private issues than in consuming public services or interacting with local governments for business purposes. We conclude that service interactions are still frequently performed via the traditional brick-and-mortar channel as well as on the local governments’ web pages. In turn, we advise local governments to bear in mind that posting curiosi-ties can help to attract users, who then might also con-sume those posts that deal with the core of government services.

Table 6. Results for interactions on different type of posts

allannounce-ment report other all

likes 12.02 17.02 55.22 19.78comments 1.52 2.33 7.49 2.62#posts 1540 585 388 2522

In general, it is striking that only 12 out of the 25 largest German cities actually have a Facebook page at all. It seems that social networks as a means for com-municating with citizens and other stakeholders are not yet perceived as a convincing medium for governments to use. For those administrations that maintain a Face-book page both the governments’ own activities as well as the citizens’ contributions vary substantially.

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Thus, it can be concluded that administrations follow different strategies.

1. Up-to-date information provision The ratio of posts published by the governments

and those by citizens is very heterogeneous in our data sample. This further underlines that the single cities differ in their strategy on how to use Facebook assum-ing they have a dedicated strategy. In general, it can be said that most posts are up-to-date. Up-to-date in our understanding means that in case of an announcement the post was published before the event took place andin case of a report the post was published at the latest one day after the described event.

Many of the analysed posts contained links to ex-ternal pages, which suggests that governments make use of the opportunity to merely post a teaser on Face-book and direct users to another pages for further in-formation. However, typical Facebook elements like applications or calendar events are hardly used by gov-ernments.

From comparing the posts related to governmental services with all posts of the city it can be inferred that posts on government issues are more likely to be an announcement or a report (table 7). Thus, in case there is a post on a governmental service, the content is to some extend richer with information and not that much related to fun issues.

Comparing the posts related to public services with all posts of a certain city regarding topicality, we con-

clude that there are in general more posts related to a certain date like an event which is announced or which is reported on (table 8). Vice versa, there are signifi-cantly less posts merely describing a government ser-vice.

Summing up, governments have already discovered some of Facebook’s basic potentials for providing up-to-date information. However, by integrating more social network specific features like events, they might tap the full potential to an even higher degree.

2. Marketing In our sample, there were only rather few posts that

advertise or inform about government services. Fur-thermore, even in cases governments informed citizens on their services, they hardly ever advertised a new service but were mostly focused on providing informa-tion like the opening hours of the town hall. In addition to this, the links on the info page did not contain any hints to a specific e-government application but just mentioned the government’s homepage in general. All in all, it seems that public administrations have not yet exploited the marketing potential of social networks.

Table 8. Results for actuality of posts

City A City B City C

related to gov. service all posts

related to gov. service all posts

related to gov. service all posts

actual 61.1% 34.6% 79.3% 78.7% 74.7% 66.5%not actual 5.6% 1.5% 1.8% 1.2% 1.1% 0.3%without time 33.3% 63.0% 18.9% 19.8% 24.2% 32.4%all 100.0% 99.1% 100.0% 99.7% 100.0% 99.2%#posts 18 327 217 1275 91 920

Table 7. Results for distribution of type of posts

City A City B City C

related to gov. service all posts

related to gov. service all posts

related to gov. service all posts

announcement 55.6% 35.5% 69.6% 73.6% 59.3% 52.7%report 38.9% 38.5% 27.2% 20.0% 34.1% 22.2%other 5.6% 25.1% 3.2% 6.0% 6.6% 24.9%all 100.0% 99.1% 100.0% 99.6% 100.0% 99.8%#posts 18 327 217 1275 91 920

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3. Co-creation With overall 14 posts calling for citizens’ co-

creation, it becomes obvious that this potential has not yet been fully exploited by governments. All of these 14 posts are related to governmental services. Two of the posts which comprise co-creation are supported by an embedded video, one post is sup-ported by a picture. However, looking at the activity on these posts, there is an average of likes of 17.71 (19.78 likes on average for all posts) and 3.79 com-ments (2.62 comments on average for all posts).These numbers show that there is much potential for improvement as enabling participation is one of the primary ideas of these posts. Combined with the re-sults of overall interaction related to posts with or without pictures and videos we see a need for design-ing these posts in a way that draws an audience in the online community.

4. F-Transaction Although there are neither any application that

can be carried out completely on Facebook nor any note on this procedure and also the applications start-ing on Facebook direct users to external pages are rather few, the number of posts including a link to a government page is high. We are aware of the fact that when carrying out a transaction embedded in Facebook, legal aspects need to be consider but at least the number of applications that only start on Facebook and in the end are carried out on an exter-nal server could be increased in order to make these services more popular.

5. Recruiting Only eleven posts (roughly 0.4%) contain job ad-

vertisements. Out of these posts, only six offers are directly related to jobs within the core public admini-strations, whereas the other five advertisements are related to jobs in affiliated organisations like the cit-ies swimming pools or kindergarten. All job offers have been posted without any pictures, videos and only one advertisement includes a hyperlink to a governmental service (i.e., a digital application por-tal).

Governments should make more use of Facebook as a platform where potential job seekers can be found. Furthermore, when posting job offers, they should pay attention to the attractiveness of the de-sign.

6. Multi-media features The use of multi-media features such as pictures,

audio streams, videos or other social media applica-tions is under-utilized compared to the advantages of increase media richness that Facebook offers. Espe-

cially when keeping in mind that multi-media signifi-cantly increase the interaction rate of citizens, gov-ernment should consider integrating pictures or vid-eos further in their online communication strategies.

6. Conclusion and Outlook

Our analysis on how local governments utilize online social networks reveals that public administrations have slowly started to utilize this new technology. Although social networks offer a variety of potentials that could overcome the defects of governments’ tra-ditional offline communication, these potentials are hardly exploited by public administrations. The analysis strongly reflects that online communication behaviour of local governments is based on dissemi-nating information in a traditional way, without adapting their communication habits on the particular characteristics of online social networks.

These observations suggest that much remains to be done until the opportunities that online social net-works exhibit can be understood and capitalized upon to a satisfactory extent. Accordingly, we identify a strong need for further research as well as for main-taining to build up the crucial assets and core compe-tencies in local governments for capitalizing on the advantages of social media more fully.

Overall, the results identified in this study have limitations since they actually inform on government communication of the larger cities in Germany, while the results are not (necessarily) generalisable to all local governments in Germany, let alone to those in other countries, or to the online communication be-haviour other than governments’ Facebook profiles.We identified the following issues for future re-search.

First, an empirical survey could shed light on the objectives and management of online communication behaviour in local governments in order to analyse and systematize the underlying reasons for utilizing or avoiding online social networks as communication channels in the first place. This survey should be flanked by in-depth interviews with selected infor-mants to identify barriers towards social networks. Second, a similar analysis on the citizens’ side can reveal (a) objectives and motivations of citizens to relate their profiles with the pages of local govern-ments, (b) factors that influence the likelihood ofcitizens to actively notice messages disseminated by local governments online, and (c) factors that govern whether and how they react on this information at all. Third, the particular skills needed to communicate successfully in online social networks can be matched with analysing the current skills of employ-ees working as content managers of local govern-

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ments in order to identify potential for improvement that is related to the workforce. After all, it is people who communicate online despite of the properties of the communication technology that is applied to that end. Fourth, it can be assessed whether performing communication in online social networks alters the topics that are discussed as well. For instance, it seems conceivable that such interactions are often carried out in a mobile fashion, which might impact the nature and mood in which the communication is performed. Fifth, based on these findings the recom-mendations that we suggested (including more pic-tures, applications etc.) should be extended and com-bined in a strategy for government communication in social networks. Finally, the aspect of co-creation and e-Participation should be accentuated as well. Itis the web 2.0 and its features which foster participa-tion and active involvement of users and it is a big chance for involving citizens in governmental ser-vices which – obviously – is far from being fully ex-ploited at the moment.

7. Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Eike Niethus and Hendrik Scholta for their t support in coding the posts.

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) funded this work in the research project Networked Service Society, promotion sign APR 10/805. We gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the International Bureau of the BMBF.

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