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Government Activities in Social Media
An Empirical Investigation of eGovernments in
Informational World Cities
Sarah Hartmann, Agnes Mainka & Isabella Peters
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (Germany)
Department of Information Science
{s.hartmann | agnes.mainka | isabella.peters}@uni-duesseldorf.de
05.06.2013 1
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Agenda
Introduction:
What is an Informational World City?
Which cities are Informational World Cities?
Government 2.0
Methods & Research Questions
Results for used social media services by governments
Conclusion
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Introduction: Informational Cities
Prototypical cities of the knowledge society are
called Informational Cities (Manuel Castells, 1989)
Infrastructures of information and communication technology
Political willingness
Position in the world city hierarchy
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Informational World Cities
(Orszullok, L., Stallmann, A., Mainka, A., & Stock, W. G., 2012).
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eGovernment/Government 2.0
eGovernment includes the interaction levels information,
communication, transaction, integration and participation
(Moon, 2002)
Government 2.0: „a more open, social, communicative,
interactive and user-centered version of e-government” (Meijer et
al., 2012)
The government should change its orientation to a citizen-
centered perspective by implementing services which satisfies its
customers (Eggers, 2005)
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Methods and Research Questions
Two groups:
Official government accounts for general purposes (e.g. the account
of a city’s government)
Governmental accounts like accounts of governmental institutions,
departments, or political persons (e.g. the mayor’s account)
Data collection: November 28, 2012 - January 3, 2013
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Blog Blogs
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Social media usage in Informational World
Cities
0
5
10
15
20
25
30T
witte
r
YouT
ube
Fa
ceb
ook
+
Lin
kedIn
Insta
gra
m
Blo
gs
Flic
kr
Pin
tere
st
Fo
urs
qua
re
Vim
eo
Weib
o
Xin
g
Liv
estr
eam
Ustr
eam
nu
mb
er
of
cit
ies
number of cities with generalgovernment accounts
number of cities with governmentalaccounts (general, departments,institutions and political persons)
cities = 31
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Number of used social media platform
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
Ba
rce
lona
Melb
ourn
e
Mu
nic
h
Syd
ne
y
To
ron
to
Am
ste
rda
m
Ku
ala
Lu
mp
ur
Sto
ckh
olm
Mila
n
Va
nco
uve
r
Fra
nkfu
rt
Mo
ntr
ea
l
Bo
sto
n
Ne
w Y
ork
Sa
n F
ran
cis
co
Se
oul
Ch
ica
go
Ho
ng
Ko
ng
Be
rlin
Dubai
To
kyo
Vie
nna
Lo
s A
ng
ele
s
Pa
ris
London
Sin
gap
ore
Sh
enzh
en
He
lsin
ki
Sa
o P
au
lo
Be
ijin
g
Sh
ang
ha
ius
ed
so
cia
l m
ed
ia p
latf
orm
s
number of used social media platformsfor general government purpose
number of used social media platformsfor all (general government, institutions,departments, and political persons)
social media services = 15
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Visibility of social media activity
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14 cities link from a speacialized social
media website to their services
28 cities link from a website to social
media services
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Visibility of social media activity
Berlin, Hong Kong, Helsinki, London, Los Angeles, Stockholm, and
Toronto use social media but have no links from their homepage
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21 cities link from their homepage to social
media services
9 cities link from their homepage to a
specialized social media website
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Linking between the services
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Backlinking from social media accounts
Highest backlink rates for YouTube, Pinterest, Livestream, Xing,
Weibo, and Foursquare
No account on Vimeo and Ustream link back and all of them are
inactive
Assumption: Accounts without backlinks
are no government accounts
Rebuttal: Inactive accounts with
backlinks on services and accounts without
backlinks linked on governments’ websites
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Activity of each city on social media
platforms
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100B
erlin
Se
oul
Ba
rce
lona
Vie
nna
Ne
w Y
ork
Pa
ris
To
kyo
Va
nco
uve
r
To
ron
to
Mila
n
Fra
nkfu
rt
Bo
sto
n
Sin
gap
ore
Mo
ntr
ea
l
Mu
nic
h
Syd
ne
y
Am
ste
rda
m
Sto
ckh
olm
Du
ba
i
Me
lbo
urn
e
Sa
n F
ran
cis
co
Ho
ng
Ko
ng
Ch
ica
go
Kuala
Lum
pur
Lo
nd
on
YouTube
Flickr
Foursquare
Blog
twe
ets
p
er
mo
nth
on
Tw
itte
r
po
ste
d c
on
ten
t p
er
mo
nth
(wit
ho
ut
Tw
itte
r)
cities = 25
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Followers and likes on social media
platforms
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Conclusion
To engage in many social media services
do not have high effects on the total number of
followers/likes
The total activity and follower/like numbers are dominated by two
or three services at the maximum
Cities should continually monitor
upcoming services and evaluate their
potential for reaching particular target
audiences
05.06.2013 15
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Thank you for your attention!
Sarah Hartmann
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (Germany)
Department of Information Science
05.06.2013 16
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