A framework for advanced social media exploitation in government for crowdsourcing

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to develop and evaluate, in “real-life” pilot applications, a framework for advanced social media exploitation by government agencies in their policy-making processes to promote public participation and conduct crowdsourcing. Design/methodology/approach – This framework has been developed through cooperation with public sector employees experienced in public policy-making, using both qualitative and quantitative techniques: semi-structured focus group discussions, scenarios development and questionnaire surveys. The evaluation of the framework has been conducted through semi-structured focus group discussions with public sector employees involved in the pilot applications. Findings – A framework has been developed for advanced social media exploitation by government agencies, which is based on the automated posting of policy-related content to multiple social media, and then retrieval and processing of citizens’ interactions with it (e.g. views, likes, comments and retweets), using the application programming interfaces (API) of these social media. Furthermore, a supporting information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure and an application process model for it were developed. Its evaluation, based on “real-life” pilot applications, leads to useful insights concerning its capabilities, strengths and weaknesses. Research limitations/implications – The proposed framework has been evaluated in a small number of pilot applications, so further evaluation of it is required, in various types of government agencies and for different kinds of policy consultations. Practical/Implications – The above framework enables government agencies to communicate with wider and more heterogeneous audiences in a short time and at a low cost, increase public participation in their policy-making processes, collect useful knowledge, ideas and opinions from citizens and, finally, design better, more socially rooted, balanced and realistic policies. Originality/value – This research contributes to the development of knowledge concerning advanced practices for effective social media exploitation in government (which is currently limited, despite the considerable relevant knowledge developed in this area for the private sector), by developing and evaluating a framework for advanced and highly automated exploitation of multiple social media by government agencies. Furthermore, an evaluation methodology for such practices has been developed, which is based on sound theoretical foundations.

Use of Social Media in Citizen-Centric Electronic Government Services

“…Loukis and Charalabidis (2015) discussed the concepts of passive and active crowdsourcing where passive crowdsourcing was considered to exploit the content generated by users whereas active crowdsourcing is defined as stimulating the users' content. Spiliotopoulou et al (2014) considered crowdsourcing, as a valuable tool for identifying the key issues perceived by citizens with regard to the specific social problem faced by the government and gathering interesting ideas and solutions for it. Moreover, it is cost effective and can generate inputs from a larger audience (Warner, 2011).…”

Social Media Use for Decision Making Process in Educational Settings: The Greek Case for Leaderships Views and Attitude in Secondary and Tertiary Education

“…These benefits focus on better understanding of peoples' needs, desires and views, during a bottom-up public policy making process that not only identifies problems and needs but also sufficiently responds to them [20,23]. Furthermore, the deposit of opinions and ideas by citizens -in this case students, staff, teachers-which result in creative and innovative response actions and policies [40,41] on several problems is identified as benefit. Beneficial is also the conversion of the initially "silent knowledge" which is diffused by a large number of citizens to code and explicit knowledge that can be used to design better policies [20,21].…”

Using Crowdsourcing to Support Civic Engagement in Strategic Urban Development Planning: A Case Study of Ostrava, Czech Republic

“…Besides helping to solve local problems, the fact of engaging a crowd of people to address complex issues save the administration money (Schweitzer, Buchinger, Gassmann, & Obrist, 2013;Royo & Yetano, 2015) and lead to more legitimate choices as it results in the design of better, more socially rooted, balanced and realistic policies (Spiliotopoulou, Charalabidis, N. Loukis, & Diamantopoulou, 2014). This is confirmed by Zuccon et al (2013), who, proved that crowdsourcing enables to reach a higher number of participants and provides results as valuable as those furnished by traditional methods, at half the cost and collecting five times more data.…”

“…Moreover, crowdsourcing allows a citizen to influence the topics to be included in the urban planning agenda (Royo & Yetano, 2015), and it opens a new form of community building for government (Koch, Füller, & Brunswicker, 2011) as a consequence of new relationships that arise between the administration and the crowd, including citizens' building-up of social capital and a greater sense of local identity on the part of citizens (Collm & Schedler, 2012). Therefore, it increases citizens' participation and engagement (Spiliotopoulou et al, 2014), (Tapscott, Williams, & Herman, 2008).…”

“…Last but definitely not least benefit is that it promotes transparency and accountability as well as reduces corruptions, enabling urban government to open up large quantities of activity and spending related data (Spiliotopoulou et al, 2014).…”