Citizens' engagement on local governments' Facebook sites. An empirical analysis: The impact of different media and content types in Western Europe

Highlights

• Different media and content types have a significant impact on citizens' engagement.

• Communicational differences across public administration styles exist.

• Local governments allowing wall posts obtain higher engagement levels.

• A bigger audience does not necessarily result in larger engagement levels.

• Posts have to be focused around topics of interest to local citizens.

• SM are helping to empower citizens and expand democracy.

Abstract

There is a very limited empirical research examining the impact of media and content types on stakeholders' engagement on social media platforms, and basically none within the public sector. The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of media and content types on stakeholders' engagement on Western European local governments' Facebook pages. The sample includes 15-member countries of the EU via 75 local governments belonging to four different public administration styles, analyzing 50 posts from each municipality. The posts were coded into 16 content types (e.g. environment, housing) and 5 media types (e.g. video, text), respectively. Metrics of popularity, commitment, virality and engagement were also computed for each post. Results show that the most used media types are links and photos. Cultural activities, sports and marketing related topics are the most widely posted by Western European local governments, but these contents do not seem to be the most relevant for citizens. Local governments' preferences to different media and content types seem to depend on the institutional context. Significant differences on engagement levels by citizens have also been found among media and content types and in different institutional contexts. This study provides practitioners and academics with some initial research findings about the effect of different communicational strategies on citizen engagement, which are very important factors in order to improve the effectiveness of e-participation offerings.

Introduction

Governments are accountable to citizens and society at large, since they are responsible for safeguarding the interests of the general public. By using the Internet and social media (SM) a huge amount of information can be published for a relatively low cost. In this way, the use of ICTs in the public sector (e-government) has become a powerful strategy for administrative reform at all levels of government. In regard to the use of ICTs in local governments, Johannessen, Flak, and Sæbø (2012) found that SM is ranked third among the preferred modes of communication by the identified stakeholders' groups (politicians, administration and civil society) after the e-mail and the municipality web site. They also concluded that effective municipal communication and e-participation require the use of different media, and that 70% of respondents preferred some kind of digital communication.

Growing dynamics of SM suggest that it is not a fad. This study focuses on Facebook since it is on the first place among SM sites according to Alexa rankings (Alexa.com., 2013). Furthermore, Facebook has the highest levels of engagement among SM users, with 63% of Facebook users visiting the site at least once a day and 40% doing so multiple times throughout the day (Pew Research Center, 2013). The use of Facebook to enable contact among citizens can be characterized as a normal practice. So, among all the available SM, Facebook offers the clearest possibilities for more sustained interaction between citizens and their local authority (Ellison & Hardey, 2013).

Prior studies have investigated government's use of SM (among others, Abdelsalam et al., 2013, Bertot et al., 2010, Bonsón et al., 2014, Bonsón et al., 2012, Ellison and Hardey, 2013, Ellison and Hardey, 2014, Ferro et al., 2013, Graham and Avery, 2013, Hofmann et al., 2013, Meijer and Thaens, 2013, Mossberger et al., 2013, Oliveira and Welch, 2013, Panagiotopoulos et al., 2013, Reddick and Norris, 2013, Snead, 2013) and the use of Facebook for political engagement (Conroy et al., 2012, Rustad and Saebo, 2013). They have also examined the engagement on business entities Facebook pages (Bonsón and Ratkai, 2013, Dekay, 2012, Gummerus et al., 2012, Haigh et al., 2013, Waters et al., 2009). However, very limited research exists about the impact of media and content types on stakeholders' engagement. There are only a few papers measuring the real interaction with stakeholders, and even less focusing on how content type influences user engagement. Leston-Bandeira and Bender (2013) conducted a content analysis of messages published on Facebook and Twitter, but these studies only focused on Parliaments. Ramanadhan, Mendez, Rao, and Viswanath (2013) examined what types of content are typically shared via SM and the response of the audience. However, their study is limited to health promotion programs. The limited availability of research into the subject demonstrates why the impact of media and content types on stakeholders' engagement is an interesting research topic. Therefore we decided to extend these studies to local governments and their audiences on Facebook.

Fostering participation in SM platforms is an issue that continues to present challenges for researchers and practitioners alike (Al-Debei et al., 2013, Lee and Kwak, 2012). Investigating this matter in terms of the public sector's SM platforms is an area that requires further research as the continuous usage and engagement of citizens on these platforms are key success factors. While this study does not challenge the positive impact of SM on government per se, it posits that this relationship requires a more comprehensive examination. In order to measure this impact, the paper is based on theories of voluntary reporting, agency problem and citizen e-participation initiatives, by means of media and content types' analyses, and differentiating among the contexts of different public administration styles.

Several authors have indicated the need that future research puts a greater emphasis on the real impact of SM on government-to-citizen (G2C) relationships, reinforcing the qualitative analysis of what the local entities do by means of SM channels (Bonsón et al., 2012, Reddick and Norris, 2013). In other words, the analyses need to be expanded beyond implementation to emphasize the real use of SM tools by governments and citizens and the impact on G2C relationships. In this context, the objective of this paper is to measure the impact of Facebook use by Western European local governments on stakeholders' engagement. The effect of different media and content types on citizen engagement will be analyzed, and also the influence of the institutional context on Facebook use and citizen engagement. So, this paper examines the effort of Western European local governments to promote transparency and citizen engagement through voluntary reporting by using Facebook, with the aim of giving answer to the following research questions. Does the use of different media and content types influence citizen engagement? Are there any communicational differences across different public administration styles? After presenting the theoretical framework, a more specific set of propositions will be presented in Section 2.3. Results show that there is a significant impact of media and content types on stakeholders' engagement and point toward the existence of communicational differences across public administration styles.