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Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Government – Citizen Interaction Online. Examining the Social Media Pages of the Russian Regional Authorities

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Social Computing and Social Media (HCII 2024)

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Abstract

The current stage of e-participation development in Russia is associated with unification across the country as well as the institutionalization of social media (SM) as a channel of government-citizen communication. As a result, subnational governments are actively launching and utilizing their official SM pages. This pilot study attempts to explore some emerging patterns of their use by public authorities and citizens. The overview of 79 regions is complemented by a deep analysis of five cases. Overall, one may notice substantial variation in how actively these SM pages are used across the country, which may reflect the differences in regional e-governance performance as well as human capital development. In terms of content, the communication is mostly centered on non-politicized issues related to socioeconomic policies and public administration. This trend can be attributed to most of the regions, though some peculiar topics can be revealed in separate cases. While the focus of SM pages is on informing citizens, the latter seem to use these pages to communicate their problems to the public authorities, thus contributing to the institutionalization of SM as an e-participation mechanism. At the same time, the level of engagement remains low and does not show a certain positive or negative trend so far, despite the recent federal initiatives.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The number of gospubliki in Russia has reached 220 thousand. D-Russia.ru. 02.11.2023. URL: https://d-russia.ru/kolichestvo-gospablikov-v-rossii-dostiglo-220-tysjach.html (accessed: 10.11.2023) [in Russian].

  2. 2.

    Federal Law N 270-FZ On amendments to the Federal Law “On ensuring access to information on the activities of state bodies and local governments” and Article 10 of the Federal Law “On ensuring access to information on the activities of courts in the Russian Federation”. 14.07.2022. URL: https://base.garant.ru/404992163/ (accessed 15.11.2023) [in Russian].

  3. 3.

    Note: ** – correlation is significant at 0.01 level, * – correlation is significant at 0.05 level.

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Acknowledgements

The research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation grant No. 22-18-00364 “Institutional Transformation of E-Participation Governance in Russia: A Study of Regional Peculiarities” (https://rscf.ru/project/22-18-00364/).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. HSE University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Yury Kabanov & Anna Kuzmenko

  2. ITMO University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Yury Kabanov

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  1. Yury Kabanov
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Correspondence to Yury Kabanov .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Adela Coman

  2. University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

    Simona Vasilache

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Kabanov, Y., Kuzmenko, A. (2024). Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Government – Citizen Interaction Online. Examining the Social Media Pages of the Russian Regional Authorities. In: Coman, A., Vasilache, S. (eds) Social Computing and Social Media. HCII 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14705. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-61312-8_8

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