A Government-Run Online Community to Support Recipients of Welfare Payments

Abstract

With the ubiquitous presence of smart phones and the availability of easy-to-use applications, there is an increase in the number of online services. A growing number of people now search for information and interact online. They expect to see services available and accessible online. To meet citizens’ expectations, governments have also increased their online presence. However, information and services are not the only reasons people go online. People also build their social circle online, seeking support and empathy, looking for someone with whom they can talk and who can understand their situation and worries. Online communities (and social networks in general) have been shown to have the potential to provide social and emotional peer-support. Our work aimed at determining whether online communities could be deployed in the public administration domain, in particular to support people receiving welfare payments, with similar benefits. We hypothesized that an online community could provide such support to disadvantaged citizens. Toward testing this hypothesis, after a user requirements analysis and some preparatory work, we designed and developed an online community for a specific target group of welfare recipients, as a collaboration between CSIRO and the Australian Department of Human Services. The community was deployed for one year. In this paper, we briefly explain our aims and the work that went into preparing for the community. We introduce the portal and the support it offered. We then report our observations and findings about both the informational and emotional support participants received, through an analysis of the comments posted in the community, and whether this support was perceived as welcome and useful.

“#Government” - Understanding Dissemination, Transparency, Participation, Collaboration and Engagement on Twitter for Citizens

“…Public sector, social media adoption has remained an under-researched domain [24] [35] which is line with our observation by reviewing the prior literature. Therefore, in this study we will explore how a social media platform has been used for various purposes in public administration domain through prior literature (section 2.1 to section 2.5) and by exploring how "#government" and "#gov" had been used on Twitter.…”

“…The objective of building such a platforms is to initiate collaborations among public administration and citizens [41] for creating innovations and value added services. Social media had been used for different purposes for this such as: innovation within governments [22][34] emergency management [27] and; for analyzing attitudinal and cognitive aspects of citizens interactions [24].…”