TY - JOUR
T1 - Citizen engagement on local government Facebook pages
T2 - Experience from Aotearoa New Zealand
AU - Alam, Ashraful
AU - Meenar, Mahbubur
AU - Barraza, Francisco
AU - Khalil, Momtaj Bintay
AU - Knopp, Katie
N1 - Funding Information:
We want to thank Pengjun Zhao and the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. We are also grateful to the School of Geography of the University of Otago for funding the research through a summer scholarship. Our sincere thanks to Claire Colyer for reading the draft version and for valuable feedback. Thanks to Chris Garden for drawing the local government boundary map.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2022/4
Y1 - 2022/4
N2 - This paper explores the role of local government Facebook pages in citizen engagement by focusing on two councils in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Dunedin City Council (DCC) and the Otago Regional Council (ORC). We investigate how these councils use their Facebook pages to communicate government matters with citizens, and how citizens engage with the councils using the pages. Examination of Facebook posts by the two councils from January to December 2019 reveals that citizens were ‘informed’ of various council-identified issues through the use of ‘passive’ posts. There were relatively scant ‘active’ posts, which hold greater potential for meaningful engagement. It is apparent that both councils are more managerial and less consultative and participatory in their approach to social media use for citizen engagement. We recommend that local governments can enhance the level of engagement by exploring ways to increase their page followers, using a combination of both active and passive posts frequently, increasing and experimenting with types of active posts, and adopting te reo Māori and minority languages to ensure an inclusive virtual environment. This study offers new insights for both local governments and social media researchers to rethink how to best utilise Facebook pages for effective e-participation.
AB - This paper explores the role of local government Facebook pages in citizen engagement by focusing on two councils in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Dunedin City Council (DCC) and the Otago Regional Council (ORC). We investigate how these councils use their Facebook pages to communicate government matters with citizens, and how citizens engage with the councils using the pages. Examination of Facebook posts by the two councils from January to December 2019 reveals that citizens were ‘informed’ of various council-identified issues through the use of ‘passive’ posts. There were relatively scant ‘active’ posts, which hold greater potential for meaningful engagement. It is apparent that both councils are more managerial and less consultative and participatory in their approach to social media use for citizen engagement. We recommend that local governments can enhance the level of engagement by exploring ways to increase their page followers, using a combination of both active and passive posts frequently, increasing and experimenting with types of active posts, and adopting te reo Māori and minority languages to ensure an inclusive virtual environment. This study offers new insights for both local governments and social media researchers to rethink how to best utilise Facebook pages for effective e-participation.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cities.2022.103584
DO - 10.1016/j.cities.2022.103584
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85123011395
VL - 123
JO - Cities
JF - Cities
SN - 0264-2751
M1 - 103584
ER -