Social Media and Red Tape in Japan

Muneo KaigoUniv. of Tsukuba

Administrative Interruptions in Building Civil Society Online Communities in Japan: The case of the Tsukuba Civic Activities Cyber-Square

To pick up from yesterday’s keynote by Thomasz Janowski

• Electronic Governance

– National to local (Failure of Ministry Initiative local SNS systems in Japan, Local municipalities suffer )

– Cross sectorial to Deep sectorial

• Project directive: How to have civil society organizations (who are offline) engage onsocial media (online)?

Location of Field Experiment since 2012

概要

Start February 1, 2012

ManagementMunicipal Govt. of Tsukuba (Civic

Activities Dept.)

Target Area Tsukuba, Ibaraki

5

facebook.com/tsukuba.hiroba

Currently…

• The Optimists

– Everything is A-OK!

• Perfectionist/Pessimist

– Lots of problems.. Lack of expertise among personnel, lack of know-how or theories, digital divide among users, lack of resources…

• From Outside

– What’s actually going on? I can’t see?

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March event

From “Return on Investment or Social Capital? Comparing Field Experiment Results of a Civil Society SNS Page in Japan” (2014 New Media and Citizenship/Seattle

Festvial Booth

Ads

Engagement=Strong relation with events (To use/interact in the facebook page)

Inside Informant:Mr. Txxxxx

Psst! This is what’s happening…

Main Administrative Interruptions in Online Communities

• Circular letters for sanction/approval

• Neighborhood Associations related complaints

• Privacy concerns

Trends of Engagement from February 1 2012 – May 7, 2014

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Hmm, what are these dips?

Annual Personnel Reshuffles and Reassignments

• The beginning of the fiscal year in Japan is April and therefore, local and national governments routinely shuffle personnel annually or bi-annually.

• The reason for these shuffles is to avoid any collusion or “back-scratching” occurring by the workers.

Trend of Decline of Engagement (the total number of

actions made by Facebook users )

among users from March 1, 2013 – May 7, 2013

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Trend of Decline of Engagement (the total number of actions made by Facebook users) among users from March 1, 2014 –

May 7, 2014

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2014

Déjà vu!

Five-stage maturity model - define government related usage of social media to create online communities (Lee & Kwak, 2012 )

1 Initial conditions describe one-way broadcasting information and static interaction

2 Data transparency has limited feedback

3 Open participation allows input that can be used for policy decisions, e-voting and e-petitioning

4 Open collaboration allows various levels of sharing

5 Ubiquitous engagement tries to encapsulate the image of total integration of social media and decision-making processes

Red tape inhibiting online community growth (Kraut and Resnick, 2012)

Type of Red TapeInhibiting Growth of Online

Community

Circular letters within local

governments

Contribution and Commitment

(Hurting Visibility and feedback,

inhibiting contribution)

Neighborhood association related

concerns

Commitment and Newcomers (lack of

transparency, inhibition of joining)

Act on the Protection of Personal

Information related privacy concerns

Contribution and Newcomers

(visibility, inhibition of joining)

Annual personnel

reshuffles/reassignments

Regulating behavior, Contribution

Commitment (lack/lapse of

moderation, visibility, cohesion)

Social Media and Red Tape in Japan

Muneo KaigoUniv. of Tsukuba

mkaigo@japan.tsukuba.ac.jp