The Use of Social Media Policies by US MunicipalitiesLamar Vernon Bennetta and Aroon Prasad Manoharanb

aSchool of Business, Public Administration, and Information Sciences, Long Island University-Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY, USA; bDepartment ofPublic Policy and Public Affairs, John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston,Boston, MA, USA

ABSTRACTAs the use of social media technologies becomes ever more ingrained in the day-to-day functions ofpublic organizations, it is important to develop relevant social media policies to guide their effectiveuse and enable increasingly transparent engagement with citizens. Analyzing the content of suchpolicies can inform scholars about the intended purpose of government’s use of social media. Hence,to build the foundation for a research agenda focused on the role of policy in government’s ability toeffectively engage citizens, this exploratory study first identified 156 US cities with a recognizablesocial media presence and then employed a content analysis to analyze the key elements of theirsocial media policies. Based on our findings, most cities have integrated social media into dailyoperations, however, many do not provide effective social media policies to guide such use.

KEYWORDSCities; citizens; e-government; policy; socialmedia

Introduction

As public organizations have become more conscious ofthe value of social media technologies, they have begunto use social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, andYouTube to communicate and interact with citizenswhile employing traditional websites for conventionalfunctions like information provision and online transac-tions. The value of using these technologies is evident bythe scope of social media use among the public.According to a recent study conducted by the PewResearch Center (Anderson & Caumont, 2014), nearlytwo-thirds (64%) of Americans use Facebook, withroughly one-third (30%) using Facebook as a primarynews source. Given this scope, governments have recog-nized social media as a useful tool for engaging citizens,and some scholars (Lee & Kwak, 2012) have gone as farto say that if used properly social media can help facil-itate ubiquitous engagement and citizens will have theability, through these technologies, to be fully engaged indecision making process.

The presence of social media technologies is also anindication that governments are transitioning towardthe two-way communication of e-governance and awayfrom the one-way communication of e-government.Given its potential for increased citizen participationand deliberation online, this transformation is not onlydesirable but also necessary because

as the availability of mobile computing devices such asPDAs, iPhones, and location-aware GPS-based systemshas become increasingly useful, and wireless access tothe Internet has dramatically increased throughout theUnited States, so has the ordinary citizen’s expectationfor quick and easy access to information. (Mandarano,Meenar, & Steins, 2010, p. 123)

The use of social media technologies also offers benefitsfor governments who can “tap into the collectiveknowledge of society quickly and directly [ensuringthat] citizens move from being passive consumers ofgovernment services to advisers and innovators contri-buting ideas that are in better accord with their indivi-dual and group needs” (United Nations, 2010, p. 45).This is because social media has shown itself, as a usefultool for citizens to have a greater voice in the affairs ofgovernment, and in some cases the collective voice ofsocial media users has been the catalyst for socialchange. Warren, Sulaiman, and Jaafar (2014) inter-viewed five hundred citizens and social activists onthe role of social media in civic engagement andfound that the use of social media by citizens willincrease their likelihood to participate in the politicalprocess. Another example of the power of social mediais the fact that these technologies were used to pushback against government oppression in places likeBelarus, Moldova, and Iran (Shirky, 2011). In theAmerican context, social media has proven to be auseful tool in exposing and challenging flagrant police

CONTACT Aroon Prasad Manoharan aroon.manoharan@umb.edu Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs, John W. McCormack GraduateSchool of Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION2017, VOL. 40, NO. 4, 317–328http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2015.1113182

© 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

misconduct (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015), which has givenrise to the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Social mediahas provided the fuel for this movement and hasallowed the issue of police misconduct to become amajor part of political discourse in the United States.

The adoption of social media technologies also hasgreat potential to increase the transparency and account-ability of governments toward their citizens and stake-holders, while also enhancing citizen participation andengagement (Bonsón, Torres, Royo, & Flores, 2012;Picazo-Vela, Gutierrez-Martinez, & Luna-Reyes, 2012).By transparency, we mean the basic principle that citizenshave a fundamental right to access information abouttheir government’s actions. Social media support thisright by enabling greater citizen awareness of the day-to-day working of their public officials, thereby facilitat-ing a positive perception of government, particularly withregard to openness (Song & Lee, 2013). They thusempower citizens to examine public problems from amacrolevel perspective and empathize with governmentofficials as they work to solve public issues. Transparencyin government perpetuates a deeper trust because it allowscitizens to look beyond surface level issues to the greaterproblems faced by their administrators and communities.

Transparency also extends to the duty of govern-ments to readily provide information about governmentactions. A simple example of such government transpar-ency is the Congressional Record in which all speeches,motions, and procedures are available for public view. Inthe US context, government transparency is legally codi-fied in the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), which,as Rosenbloom (2003) noted in his seminal work,Administrative Law for Public Managers,

serves as a platform for requiring federal administrativeprocesses to embrace the basic democratic-constitu-tional values of openness for accountability; represen-tativeness and public participation in policyformulation; procedural due process for the fair treat-ment of individuals; and rationality when regulatingprivate parties and other entities. (p. 13)

A majority of US states have followed the federal gov-ernment and enacted their own APA statutes to governtransparency at the state and local level. These lawshave done a great deal to bolster the constitutionalvalues of openness and public participation, whichwere impeded in the pre-Internet era by the cost anddifficulty of giving citizens easy access to governmentinformation. In those days, citizens wanting to obtaingovernment documents either had to go to a library orfile a formal request, which acted as a disincentive forthem to seek out information on government actions

and their impact on citizens’ lives, thereby undermin-ing the whole concept of transparency. The rise of theInternet as a mainstay of American culture, however,has provided government with an opportunity toenhance transparency by reducing the monetary andnonmonetary costs associated with accessing govern-ment information. Today, thanks to the 2002 E-govern-ment Act, all federal agencies must make documentsand information pertaining to the day-to-day work ofgovernment readily accessible on line. The majority ofstates have since followed suit and enacted similar lawsthat require state and local agencies to provide onlineaccess to documents. The ability of such laws toenhance transparency is a primary motivating factorfor cities to provide online access to documents (SanDiego Regional Data Library, 2013).

Research has also found that citizens who use e-gov-ernment to access government services and informa-tion are more likely to perceive government asresponsive and responsible as well as transparent, afinding that led Tolbert and Mossberger (2006) to con-clude that “[e]-government is worth pursuing as ameans of enhancing the effectiveness of governmentagencies and their relationship with citizens” (p. 365).Park, Kang, Rho, and Lee (2015) directly test the rolethat social media plays in enhancing citizen trustthrough their analysis of citizen-government commu-nication via Twitter. The major finding of their studywas that government officials who use Twitter to com-municate directly with the public increased citizen trustin their agency and government as a whole.

It could also be argued that social media technologiescan enhance transparency and transform the citizen-government relationship because their users play a directrole in creating content, disseminating useful informa-tion, and influencing decision making. Thus, Linders(2012) in his a study of social media use by theAmerican federal government, argued that public orga-nizations use social media technologies to create valuethrough government by involving citizens in coproduc-tion as partners rather than customers, with a greaterand more active role in solving public problems.

Linders (2012) further argued that this concept ofcoproduction plays a major role in the management ofpublic organizations, such as auxiliary police forces inwhich citizen volunteers play an active role in maintain-ing public safety in their community. Nevertheless, thetraditional means of coproduction have shown them-selves insufficient in improving transparency and civicengagement, with onemajor limit being the cost involved.For instance, in the auxiliary police, only citizens withenough time and knowledge of the process and issues can

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participate and it could be persuasively argued that mostworking people cannot afford to take time off work orpersonal responsibilities to participate in such activities.

Cost also undermines a government’s ability toenhance trust and transparency through coproductionbecause the limited number of citizens able to participategreatly reduces its capacity to widely disseminate infor-mation about services. Linders (2012) thus proposedsocial media as one means by which government canreduce the costs of coproduction and increase citizenengagement and transparency. More specifically, helikened such “government as a platform” to SaaS (soft-ware as a service) by which social media technologiesmake knowledge and IT infrastructure available to thepublic, help inform citizens, and enable them to partici-pate in the decision-making process (Linders, 2012).

Yet despite such recognition of how social media canbe used to enhance government engagement with citi-zens, provide a more transparent experience, andincrease citizen trust in authorities; little scholarlyattention has been devoted to the content of socialmedia policy and how it can inform scholars aboutthe intended purpose of social media use by govern-ment. This is important because policy provides clearguidance to government officials about how socialmedia should be implemented in their organizations.Although governments have increasingly turned tosocial media as part of their overall strategy to improvethe citizen-government relationship, a lack of clearpolicy has frustrated its implementation. This view issupported by pubic officials’ views of the utility ofsocial media as a tool to engage the public.

Hiltz, Kushma, and Plotnick (2014) interviewedemergency managers and based on their findings, thesecond most barrier to greater social media use by theirorganizations is the lack of a clear policy on how socialmedia should be used. The managers stated that thelack of clear policies makes them reticent to using socialmedia because of concerns about the accuracy of infor-mation as well as who is held accountable for thecontent of the social media page. Another source ofconcern for public managers is the tendency for orga-nizations to focus on technical issues rather than orga-nizational issues when the agency decides to use socialmedia. In a focus group discussion with Mexican civilservants Picazo-Vela et al. (2012) noted that managerscited the lack of a regulatory framework to guide imple-mentation as the biggest organizational issue withregard to social media use. Further evidence of thelack of attention paid to establishing formal policesfor social media use is evident in Kavanaugh and col-laborators’ (2012) focus groups with twenty-five emer-gency service managers. The major finding was that

managers perceived that government is operating inthe dark when it comes to social media use.Governments, in their opinion, use social media with-out having a clear idea of their target audience, howposts are monitored, and the capacity in which socialmedia is used. Based on these findings, the authorsargue that for social media to be successful in govern-ment it should be institutionalized and its use should bedriven by formal policy.

Beyond the views of public managers, the need forfuture research on the presence and content of socialmedia policy is evident in studies of social media policyand social media adoption. Bertot, Jager, and Hansen(2012) undertook one of the few studies of social mediapolicies. They found that many of the policies that governsocial media use predate the advent of the technology.They argue that social media policy, at the federal level, ispatchwork of seventeen law, administrative memos, andexecutive orders. One could argue that the major implica-tion of this patchwork approach is that the policies lack aclear focus and provide little guidance to federal employ-ees about how social media should be used. Although thisstudy has provided a baseline understanding of socialmedia policy, the authors did not address what provisionsa social media policy should contain or, more impor-tantly, how those provisions will ease the implementationof social media in government.

Mergel and Bretschneider (2013) view the developmentof social media policy as a natural part of the adoptionprocess. Their three-stage model of social media adoptiondraws from research (See Melitski, Gavin, & Gavin, 2010)on how new technologies, such as e-government, areadopted by public organizations. In the first two stages—experimentation and constructive chaos—the organizationis testing the technology to get an idea of how it will fit intotheir strategic mission. Once the organization is comforta-ble with the technology they move to the next stage—institutionalization—where the use of the technology isstandardized through the establishment of formal policesto guide implementation. In their view, the purpose ofthese policies is to reduce the risk of failure. Although themodel provides clarity to the process of social media adop-tion, the manner in which they characterize institutionali-zation may have problematic implications. One couldargue that in a public organization that policy guides theuse and implementation of any technology. For instancepolicy, not social media specific policy per se, lays out howmanagers procure and test a new technology.

Based on this literature review the purpose of thisstudy is twofold:

(1) To provide an overall picture of the state ofsocial media policy in local governments.

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(2) To identify the key elements in social mediapolicies with particular attention to what cur-rently constitutes policy and the ways in whichpolicy is lacking.

We addressed these issues by conducting a contentanalysis of local government’s social media policies.However, as the analysis was exploratory, its aim wasmerely to provide the foundation for a research agendafocused on policy’s role in the ability of government toeffectively engage citizens. Nevertheless, we hope that itmay also extend the conversation on how scholarshipcan support government effectiveness by providinginsight into the current workings of and neededimprovements in policy development andimplementation.

Models, research questions, and methodology

Research models

Given our focus on improved citizen engagement andtransparency, from the myriad possible models of howand why governments choose to use social media, weselected two that have these ends as their ultimate goal:government maturity (Lee & Kwak, 2012) and three-stage adoption (Mergel & Bretschneider, 2013).

Government maturity modelBecause the most frequently cited model of e-govern-ment development, that of Chadwick and May (2003),has several important gaps, Lee and Kwak (2012) useddata from five case studies of governmental socialmedia use to develop their Open GovernmentMaturity Model. This model addresses the earlier short-comings by focusing on the roles of organizationalculture, regulations, policy, outcomes, and challengesin the implementation of social media in government.These authors view the adoption process as progressingfrom an initial stage of implementation through stagesof data transparency, open participation, open colla-boration, and finally, ubiquitous engagement. Eachstage is governed by four dimensions: capabilities, pro-cess, outcomes, and measures of performance.

In the initial stage, government agencies use socialmedia to communicate simple information about gov-ernment services, such as when the Federal EmergencyManagement Agency uses Facebook and Twitter toinform citizens of the deadlines for disaster assistanceapplications. Both the information provided and thecapabilities and processes are simple, and the amountof data provided is limited. Likewise, communication isone-way, static, and provides few opportunities for

citizens to interact with the agency. The agency out-come for social media use at this stage is that citizensdo not visit the social media page and are relegated to apassive role in governance.

In the second stage, data transparency, governmentagencies focus on two objectives: transparency of gov-ernment operations and the provision of high qualitydata that allows citizens to judge the quality of govern-ment services. One example is the Census Bureau usingsocial media to notify citizens of the publication of newdata or reports and inviting them to comment on theinformation’s quality. The capabilities and process ofsocial media in this stage are the provision of highquality and high impact data while also developingformal data governance structures and privacy stan-dards to protect the integrity of publicly availabledata. Nevertheless, as in the initial stage, communica-tion remains limited: the predicted agency outcomesare increased public awareness of government servicesand activities and, to a lesser degree, an increase ingovernment accountability.

In the open participation stage, government agenciesfocus on three objectives: public feedback, interactivecommunication, and crowdsourcing, exemplified by alocal parks department using Facebook to solicit feed-back on the proposed location of a new park. Thecapabilities and process of governmental social mediausage at this stage are citizen ability to create, post, andshare content online as government agencies develop aformal data governance structure and clearly definedprivacy policy. The predicted agency outcomes are real-time continuous feedback from citizens and a culturalshift toward open government. In particular, the openparticipation stage creates an environment conduciveto open dialogue and communication between citizensand government.

In the open collaboration stage, the government’smain focuses are interagency collaboration, open colla-boration with the public, and working with other agen-cies to create value-added services. In this stage, datafrom social media applications are used to develop datacapabilities that improve decision-making, a skill thatcascades down to employees who have been trained inand refined their analytic skills. The predicted out-comes are increased synergy among agencies anddepartments, increased cost savings from the develop-ment and use of analytical tools, and increased citizenengagement from the wide dissemination of data. Atthis stage, governments use social media to helpdevelop a culture of open government.

In the final stage of ubiquitous engagement, govern-ments realize the full potential of social media to pro-mote open government. Although the capabilities and

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process at this stage resemble those in open collabora-tion, they further extend to easing access to public dataand integrating social media usage as a critical activityin the organization’s mission. The predicted outcomesare direct channels of communication and the fullembrace of a culture of open government.

Three-stage adoption modelAlthough Halpern and Katz (2012) have argued thatthe purpose of social media is to increase transparencyand citizen engagement, they apply a less expansivemodel to chronicle its adoption. After using an analysisof citizen comments on official government socialmedia pages to show that higher levels of media parti-cipation increase government transparency and citizenengagement, they proposed that the relation betweensocial media and citizen engagement is a three-stageprocess quite similar to the model of Chadwick andMay (2003). The first stage is purely informative: thegovernment uses social media to enhance service deliv-ery and although the media provide opportunities fortwo-way exchanges, most communication is one wayand restricted to government notifying customers ofservice offerings and changes. In the second consulta-tive stage, government begins to use the two-way com-munication capability of social media to engage citizenin a conversation. However, the communication is lim-ited in that the government sets the terms of the con-versation and gives citizens no real opportunity toimpact the decision-making process. Nevertheless, gov-ernment use of social media at this stage does promotegreater transparency because it provides greater accessand gives a voice to the daily activities of government.In the final stage, participation, the government, havingrecognized social media’s capacity to promote transpar-ency and citizen engagement, provides citizens with anauthentic opportunity to participate in the decision-making process. In addition to using citizen feedbackto change how the agency provides services, it increasestransparency by providing greater access to public datain order to facilitate citizen deliberation.

Research questions

In both models, achieving the ultimate goal is a step-wise process that requires the agency and its employeesto familiarize themselves with how these applicationsfunction before applying them strategically to promoteopen government. The primary focus of this research is:

What is the current status on the content of local gov-ernment social media policies?

This question is important because the formal policiesthat guide e-government, and by extension, social media,can potentially dictate how well this technology works in agovernmental organization. For instance, if there is noclear formal statement of who is responsible for managinga government agency’s social media presence, how canthe agency be held accountable when posted informationis inaccurate or inappropriate? Another equally importantissue is that current policies governing the use of socialmedia applications in e-government do not account forhow quickly such technologies are growing, which makesit difficult for government agencies to employ them.

Yet despite the critical importance of policy to suc-cessful use of social media as a tool to promote trans-parency and engagement, few scholars havesystematically studied the topic. In fact, based on oursearch of the current literature, only one manuscriptpublished in a peer-reviewed journal investigated therole that policy plays in social media implementation.In this study, Bertot, Jager, and Hansen (2012) pre-sented evidence that social media use in the Americanfederal government is growing quickly but that growthis occurring in a highly antiquated policy environment.They further asserted that the lack of clarity in publicpolicy has undermined the ability of federal agencies touse social media to promote three important principlesthat guide the use of social media in government:democratic participation and engagement, coproduc-tion, and the crowdsourcing of solicitation and innova-tions. Although their list of areas not fully addressed bycurrent policy is exhaustive, they did specify four areasnot fully covered by Federal law that relate to transpar-ency and citizen engagement:

● Ensuring that information disseminated throughsocial media is consistently available;

● Maintaining consistency of access for both gov-ernment agencies and for members of the public;

● Archiving information disseminated through socialmedia for permanent access and retrieval; and

● Fostering the transparency and accountability tomake government operations open and transpar-ent, thereby building citizen trust and furtherincreasing accountability.

Based on their findings of what is lacking in govern-mental social media policy, they provided a compre-hensive list of areas that merit further research, one ofwhich is governance, the focus of this study. Anotherset of necessary elements for a coherent and compre-hensive social media policy was proposed by Hrdinová,Helbig, and Peters (2010) based on their analysis of thesocial media policies of 26 local governments or

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agencies and interviews with social media professionals.These authors identified the following eight commoncomponents: (i) employee access, (ii) social mediaaccount management, (iii) acceptable use, (iv)employee conduct, (v) content, (vi) security, (vii) legalissues, and (viii) citizen conduct.

Employee access pertains to how governments con-trol who has access to the agency’s social media page.According to these authors, government agenciesaccomplish this goal in two ways: by limiting the num-ber or type of employees who are permitted to accessthe agency social media site and/or by specifying whichsocial media technologies are permitted for agency use.

Social media account management refers to the“creation, maintenance, and destruction of socialmedia accounts” (Hrdinová et al., 2010, p. 6), meaningthat this portion of the policy generally covers those inthe organization responsible for permitting the agencyto use social media applications. Hrdinová and hercolleagues used the example of the Public InformationOfficer of the state of North Carolina, who is respon-sible for approving all requests to use social media. Thepurpose of such a provision is to promote leadershipand accountability in government’s use of social mediain its daily activities.

Acceptable use covers the agency’s expectation of howemployees should use social media in an official capacity.As an example, the authors cited the city of Chandler,Arizona, which cautions employees about excessive useof social media for personal reasons because such use intheir capacity as a public official may be a matter ofpublic record. A few cities in the study, however, onlyfocused on what content is appropriate for posting whenemployees use social media in an official capacity. Onedictate common to most policies is that employeesshould not offer their own personal or political opinionswhen posting official information.

Employee conduct is quite similar to acceptable use,with the major difference that these policies specificallyspecify which content may not be posted on theagency’s social media page. Whereas most policiesreviewed by Hrdinová et al. (2010) covered the use ofracist or vulgar language, only a few addressed trans-parency and accuracy by noting that all commentsposted on the agency or government’s social mediapage would be subject to state and local public recordslaws.

Content policies stipulate which employees areresponsible for posting information and lay out proto-cols to ensure that all the information posted is accu-rate and up to date. In their study, the authors noted,content management strategies ranged from agenciesexerting little control over the content posted on social

media pages to agencies charging a single office orofficer (e.g., the public affairs office or chief technologyofficer) with creating and managing all social mediacontent. The ultimate purpose of content policies is toensure a clear line of accountability when social mediaare used to enhance government services.

Security policies cover how best to ensure the integ-rity of user and agency data, as well as the infrastruc-ture used to maintain the agency’s social mediapresence. Most policies reviewed by the authors didnot explicitly mention social media technology, butsocial media were covered in the general statements ofthe privacy policy. For instance, the security policy ofHampton, Virginia, states that social media is governedby all privacy policies that cover the use of informationtechnology.

Legal policies ensure that an agency’s use of socialmedia is consistent with all laws and regulations. Suchpolicies often mention that all posts on social mediasites are subject to public record laws, and some speci-fically cover employee conduct. For instance, theauthors reported that a few of the websites explicitlymentioned that when employees are expressing theirown personal views, they must clearly state that theirviews are not those of the agency. Other policies alsocovered the appropriate use of copyrighted materialand in some cases, barred copyrighted material on theagency’s social media page.

Citizen conduct policies govern the content of citi-zen’s social media posts. In Hrdinová et al. (2010)study, most addressed what types of content are inap-propriate or illegal and thus prohibited on the agency’ssocial media page. For the most part, these policiesprohibited citizens from posting content that containsvulgar language or promotes violence or hate.

Based on their observations, Hrdinová et al. (2010)recommended that, in addition to the eight elementsdiscussed above, government should apply four strate-gies to develop an effective social media policy:

(1) Government should clearly lay out the goalsand objectives for developing a social mediapresence so that its agencies can fully under-stand what elements should be emphasized in aformal policy. For instance, if an agency’s goalfor using social media is to increase opportu-nities for citizen participation, then having apolicy that limits citizen communication (i.e.,bars external comments) would not be a goodfit.

(2) Government should assemble a team thatincludes key leaders and stakeholders fromacross the organization. This strategy is critical

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because it provides an opportunity for a varietyof viewpoints to be considered and integratedinto the policy while still ensuring that thepolicy is fully in line with organizational goalsand objectives. For example, including ahuman resources professional in the develop-ment of a social media policy can ensure thatemployee conduct policies are in line with pre-vailing human resources practices.

(3) Government should identify existing policiesthat cover social media so that agencies cansee whether any policy that they are developingis redundant or conflicts with current policy.For instance, in nearly all US states, all contentposted online is covered by open record laws.By recognizing this fact, a city will be sure toinclude this information when developing anew social media policy.

(4) Government should have an open conversationabout conflicts and/or inconsistencies betweenproposed social media policies and existing poli-cies that govern the use of technology. In particu-lar, the rapid nature of social mediacommunication may not fit well with currentpolicies on how the government provides officialmessages to the public. Discussing and resolvinginconsistencies will ensure that implementation ofsocial media will not disrupt organizationalfunctions.

Methodology

Our study was developed with the following tworesearch questions in mind:

(1) What is the current status on the content of localgovernment social media policies?

(2) What values do local government social mediapolicies emphasize?

We limited the study to cities (n = 156) with apopulation of 150,000 or greater. The data for citypopulation are taken from 2010 census data (seeAppendix A for the list of cities). One caveat shouldbe noted about the data. These cities are the largest (bypopulation) in the United States, but they may not berepresentative of all cities or regions. Since this study isexploratory in nature, the findings of this researchshould provide a good starting point for scholars toembark on a more comprehensive study of local gov-ernment social media policies. Our analysis of socialmedia policies focused on the following areas:

● Presence of a formal policy;● The intended purpose of using social media;● Social media management;● Social media training;● Planning and implementation;● Best practices;● Designated users; and● Transparency (public records and freedom of

information laws).

The starting point for the analysis was to determinewhether a city had an official social media policy,defined as “a law or administrative order that governsthe use of social media.” To determine the presence of asocial media policy the authors conducted an exhaus-tive search of local government websites from Augustto December 2014. Of the 156 cities investigated, only20% (31) cities had such polices (as shown in AppendixB). This finding is surprising not only because all thecities studied had a social media presence, becausemany of those lacking a formal policy were using myr-iad social media applications (e.g., Facebook, Google+,and Twitter) to engage citizens. The cities with socialmedia policies were primarily from the West (14) andSouth (10), followed by Midwest (4) and Northeast (3).

After locating the policies the authors analyzed theircontent and coded it based on the various elementslisted above. The research used double coding metho-dology to ensure the accuracy of the content analysis.After the initial coding a research assistant wasemployed to recode the policies to ensure consistency.The coding was deemed to be consistent based on thefact that coding was 95% consistent, which is wellwithin the lines of adequate consistency for a researchstudy of this magnitude. The following section dis-cusses how we determined the content for each city’ssocial media policy.

Once we established that a city had an official socialmedia policy, we determined its intended purpose forsocial media from among the choices highlighted in theliterature on social media use by government. Theseinclude communication, supporting the mission orobjectives of the city and its agencies, citizen engage-ment, citizen participation, improving efficiency,departmental collaboration, increased trust or confi-dence in government, branding, transparency, and cus-tomer service. In general, each policy stated thepurpose clearly in the introduction.

The next element, social media management, essentiallyanswers the question of who manages the government’ssocial media presence. We classified management respon-sibility into four categories: decentralized (the departmentor agency is primarily responsible for management),

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centralized (a central office has primary responsibility),shared (the department and a central agency share respon-sibility), not specified (it is not explicitly stated who isresponsible for managing the city’s social media presence).

To identify the third element, employee training, weanalyzed policy content to assess whether it requiredthat employees receive training on social media use andmanagement before being allowed to use social mediaas part of their job.

The fourth element, planning and implementation ofsocial media, was identified based on whether the policyrequired an agency to submit a formal plan that articu-lated how social media was to be used and how it relates tothe overall mission and objectives of the organization.

The fifth element, best practices, was evaluated based onwhether or not the policy laid out best practices for the useof social media. Defined as a set of practices that employeesuse as a guide for using social media, best practices differ bycity but may include how employees are to post andrespond to comments, ensure accuracy of posts, and ensurethat social media use is consistent with public records lawand employee conduct policies. Although many policieshave one ormore of these elements, we considered a formalstatement of best practices to exist when the policy expli-citly stated how employees are to use social media to ensuretheir effectiveness in meeting the agency’s mission orobjectives.

The sixth element, designated users, was judged basedon whether or not the policy stipulated that only thedepartment or its designate be permitted to use socialmedia in an official capacity.

The final element, transparency, was determined bywhether or not the policy required that all activity on socialmedia conform to existing public records or freedom ofinformation laws, which was indeed explicitly stated inmost policies.

Findings

To establish the scope of the use of formal social mediapolicies in US cities, we first determined whether each cityhad such a policy. As Table 1 shows, of the 156 citiesincluded in the analysis, only 31 (20%) had any suchdocument, a surprising finding given not only that all hadan actual social media presence but also that a large major-ity used multiple social media applications to engage citi-zens. These findings imply that although cities are quick toembrace socialmedia as part of their larger communicationand service delivery strategies, few have developed policiesto guide their implementation. Although their reasons forfailing to do so could be many, we suspect that one majorreason is that the development and use of social media has

outpaced the capacity of government to develop formalsocial media policies.

Having identified the cities with a formal policy, we nextexamined each city’s intended purpose for social mediause. As Table 2 shows, a large majority of the cities (90%)see social media primarily as a means of communicationbetween the city and its citizens. Nevertheless, communi-cation does not imply engagement. As Chadwick and May(2003) demonstrated, cities often apply a managerialapproach to e-governance, meaning that many govern-ments view communication with citizens as a one-wayprocess that gives citizens no meaningful opportunity toshape policy or administrative practices. In fact, very fewcities with formal policies see citizen participation or citizenengagement (16% and 13%, respectively) as the purpose ofusing social media applications. Another stated purpose,albeit by only one third of cities with a formal policy, is as atool to support the mission or objectives of the city and itsagencies, which implies that in these cities, social media useis part of a larger strategic vision. Few social media policies,however, cite improved efficiency (10%), collaboration(10%), increased trust and confidence in government(6%), transparency (3%), or customer service (3%) as theintended purpose of using social media applications.

We determined whether a city’s social media policyexplicitly assigns responsibility for managing its socialmedia presence based on the four categories of manage-ment responsibility: decentralized, centralized, shared, ornot specified. Forty-percent of the cities with a formalpolicy employ the centralized approach, with a singledepartment or agency managing the city’s social mediapresence. As shown in Table 3, just over a third (35%) usea decentralized approach, with each department or agencymanaging its own social media presence. A small minority(6%) adopt a shared approach in which each agency or

Table 1. Presence of media policy.Does the city have a formal social media policy No. of Cities Cities (%)

Yes 30 19No 125 81

Table 2. Purpose of using social media.

Purpose of Using Social MediaNo. ofCities Cities (%)

Communication 28 90To support the mission or objectives of city/agency 10 32Citizen Engagement 5 16Citizen Participation 4 13Improve Efficiency 3 10Collaboration 3 10Increase Trust/Confidence in Government 2 6Branding 2 6No Purpose Stated 2 6Transparency 1 3Customer Service 1 3

324 L. V. BENNETT AND A. P. MANOHARAN

department works collaboratively with a single centralauthority, and 15% make no specific mention of who isresponsible for managing the city’s social media presence.

Even though a majority of cities with a formal socialmedia policy clearly state who is responsible for managingthe city’s social media presence, only three (10%) requireemployees to receive training before using social media as apart of agency operations. Yet 32% require the agency ordepartment to submit a formal plan describing how theagency will use social media, which seems contradictorygiven plan submission implies a need for employees to betrained in using these technologies. Best practices also areonly specified in the social media policies of 19% of thecities. Taken together, these findings seem to indicate thatlocal government’s social media policy focuses heavily onmanagement and accountability but pays far too littleattention to the strategic use of social media, perhapsbecause the cities do not fully understand its potential toimprove citizen engagement.

Provisions for transparency, privacy, and designatedusers, however, are far more common. A large majority(84%) of the cities with a formal social media policy stipu-late that all social media content is subject to public recordslaws. The same is true for privacy, with nearly three-quar-ters (74%) of the policies specifying how the city shouldprotect user privacy in the use of social media applications.On the other hand, just under half the cities’ policiesinclude a provision that requires agencies to restrict socialmedia use to designated employees.

Conclusions

The use of social media technologies has becomeentrenched in the daily operations of public organizationsand is being extensively incorporated into policy-makingand political campaigns. The adoption of such technolo-gies for public relations purposes such as promoting apositive organizational image is also becoming morewidely acknowledged. In particular, social media enablegovernments to connect with increasingly diverse groupsof constituents and promote collaborative governance.Yet although social media tools provide a more cost-effective means of information transmission to largegroups than do traditional media, which usually involve

a significant financial investment (Wright & Hinson,2009), they bring their own challenges, particularly withregard to privacy and security.

Our purpose in this study, therefore, was to profile theadoption of social media policies by cities across the USand identify the policies’ key elements. According to ourfindings, although cities use social media extensively indaily operations, most provide no formal social mediapolicy. Even beyond its external implications, this absenceof a social media policy or guidelines can have an adverseeffect on employee performance through a lack of propercommunication and may also reflect a lack of effort increating greater trust among employees.

Themost surprising finding is that over 80% of the citiesin the original sample have no social media policies, analarming omission given the extent of their social mediause. Moreover, few cities seem to provide any IT trainingfor their employees, which may hinder the use of socialmedia technologies to their full potential (Bromberg &Manoharan, 2015). In the private sector, across a widerange of industries that are both IT and non-IT related,social media training is now a requirement, one that somecompanies are evenmaking an important aspect in recruit-ing and new employee orientation (Meister, 2012). Hence,in addition to adopting new technologies, cities need tointroduce their employees to IT training and developmentin order to update their skills to match current trends(Manoharan, 2013).

Our analysis also reveals that city governments pri-marily gear their social media policies to internal com-munication and control rather than externalcommunication with citizens and stakeholders. Thisfinding mirrors the internal versus external dimensionsin Cameron and Quinn’s (2011) Competing ValuesFramework, which asserts that organizations with atendency to externalism are more likely to supportincreased communication with external stakeholders.Many of the cities in our research exhibit a tendencyto internalism, with a greater focus on control andcommunication within the organization.

In terms of the external dimension, however, manycities are still in the initial information and commu-nication stage of social media usage, which is clearlyreflected in their policies. Future research thus needs tofocus on the outcomes related to social media policyand the challenges in trying to link the quality of socialpolicy to actual outcomes. In particular, more assess-ment is needed of whether governments truly desirecoproduction and transparency or whether this goal issimply an assumption on the part of researchers. Moreimportant, studies need to assess whether increasedsocial media usage is actually resulting in more trans-parency and coproduction. There is also a need for case

Table 3. Management of social media.

Management of Social MediaNo. ofCities

Cities(%)

Decentralized (e.g., the Agency or Department) 11 35%Centralized (e.g., Public Information/RelationsDepartment or IT Department)

13 42%

Shared (both agency and central department (e.g., PRor IT departments)

2 6%

No Mention of Management Responsibility 5 16%

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 325

studies on the organizational adoption of social mediathat test policy theory itself. It would also be helpful todetermine whether those in charge of social mediareally understand the related policies and what socialmedia training would be adequate for their employees.This exploratory study provides a foundation and fra-mework for such future research on the role of socialmedia policies in effectively engaging citizens.

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326 L. V. BENNETT AND A. P. MANOHARAN

Appendix A

City State City State City State

New York New York Tampa Florida Des Moines IowaLos Angeles California Aurora Colorado Oxnard CaliforniaChicago Illinois Honolulu Hawai’i Tacoma WashingtonHouston Texas Anaheim California Fontana CaliforniaPhiladelphia Pennsylvania Santa Ana California Fayetteville North CarolinaPhoenix Arizona Corpus Christi Texas Moreno Valley CaliforniaSan Antonio Texas Riverside California Columbus GeorgiaSan Diego California St. Louis Missouri Huntington Beach CaliforniaDallas Texas Lexington Kentucky Yonkers New YorkSan Jose California Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Montgomery AlabamaAustin Texas Stockton California Aurora IllinoisJacksonville Florida Anchorage Alaska Glendale CaliforniaSan Francisco California Cincinnati Ohio Shreveport LouisianaIndianapolis Indiana Saint Paul Minnesota Akron OhioColumbus Ohio Greensboro North Carolina Little Rock ArkansasFort Worth Texas Toledo Ohio Amarillo TexasCharlotte North Carolina Newark New Jersey Augusta GeorgiaDetroit Michigan Plano Texas Mobile AlabamaEl Paso Texas Henderson Nevada Grand Rapids MichiganSeattle Washington Lincoln Nebraska Salt Lake City UtahDenver Colorado Orlando Florida Huntsville AlabamaWashington DC Jersey City New Jersey Tallahassee FloridaMemphis Tennessee Chula Vista California Grand Prairie TexasBoston Massachusetts Buffalo New York Overland Park KansasNashville Tennessee Fort Wayne Indiana Knoxville TennesseeBaltimore Maryland Chandler Arizona Brownsville TexasOklahoma City Oklahoma St. Petersburg Florida Worcester MassachusettsPortland Oregon Laredo Texas Newport News VirginiaLas Vegas Nevada Durham North Carolina Santa Clarita CaliforniaLouisville Kentucky Irvine California Providence Rhode IslandMilwaukee Wisconsin Madison Wisconsin Fort Lauderdale FloridaAlbuquerque New Mexico Norfolk Virginia Garden Grove CaliforniaTucson Arizona Lubbock Texas Oceanside CaliforniaFresno California Gilbert Arizona Rancho Cucamonga CaliforniaSacramento California Winston–Salem North Carolina Santa Rosa CaliforniaLong Beach California Glendale Arizona Port St. Lucie FloridaKansas City Missouri Reno Nevada Chattanooga TennesseeMesa Arizona Hialeah Florida Tempe ArizonaAtlanta Georgia Garland Texas Jackson MississippiVirginia Beach Virginia Chesapeake Virginia Cape Coral FloridaOmaha Nebraska Irving Texas Vancouver WashingtonColorado Springs Colorado North Las Vegas Nevada Ontario CaliforniaRaleigh North Carolina Scottsdale Arizona Sioux Falls South DakotaMiami Florida Baton Rouge Louisiana Peoria ArizonaOakland California Fremont California Springfield MissouriMinneapolis Minnesota Richmond Virginia Pembroke Pines FloridaTulsa Oklahoma Boise Idaho Elk Grove CaliforniaCleveland Ohio San Bernardino California Salem OregonWichita Kansas Birmingham Alabama Corona CaliforniaNew Orleans Louisiana Spokane Washington Lancaster CaliforniaArlington Texas Rochester New York Eugene OregonBakersfield California Modesto California Palmdale California

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 327

Appendix B

City State Population (2010)

New York New York 8,175,133Houston Texas 2,100,263Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1,526,006Phoenix Arizona 1,445,632Charlotte North Carolina 731,424El Paso Texas 649,121Seattle Washington 608,660Washington District of Columbia 601,723Milwaukee Wisconsin 594,833Portland Oregon 583,776Fresno California 494,665Sacramento California 466,488Omaha Nebraska 408,958Raleigh North Carolina 403,892Cleveland Ohio 396,815Tulsa Oklahoma 391,906Minneapolis Minnesota 382,578Arlington Texas 365,438Greensboro North Carolina 269,666Plano Texas 259,841Chula Vista California 243,916Chandler Arizona 236,123Reno Nevada 225,221San Bernardino California 215,213Irvine California 212,375Spokane Washington 212,052Tallahassee Florida 181,376Worchester Massachusetts 181,045Santa Rosa California 167,815Vancouver Washington 161,791Elk Grove California 153,015

328 L. V. BENNETT AND A. P. MANOHARAN