Diffusion and Assimilation of Government Microblogging: Evidence from Chinese cities

Abstract

Internationally, the public sector is adopting social media applications (e.g. Twitter and social networking services) to harness cutting-edge information technology developments, but we know little about what drives the diffusion of these applications.In this paper, I adapt the Berry-Berry policy and innovation diffusion model to explain the diffusion and assimilation of government microblogging, supplementing its four dimensions (learning, competition, upper-tier mandate and public pressure) with organizational resources and capacity. Data on 282 prefecture-level cities in China are employed to test several theoretical hypotheses empirically. Horizontal competition is found to be significantly and positively associated with the assimilation of government microblogging, although the other three dimensions are found not to be its key antecedents. Consistent with the study's hypotheses, the results support the significantly positive effects of fiscal resources and IT capacity. Municipal wealth, size and administrative ranking are also positively and significantly correlated with the number of government microblogs.

Policy Role of Social Media in Developing Public Trust: Twitter communication with government leaders

“…The governments can benefit from the adoption of this efficient SNS as it can be less costly than managing formal websites and other media (Ma 2013). On the contrary, a central government cannot easily employ its social media as such, because it needs to treat more complex and political issues carefully with an audience scope that is broader than that of the local governments (Ma 2014). Further, Asian countries' historical experiences with their centrally controlled political system can influence the communication practices of the federal governmental ministries (Ma 2014), which may conflict with a leading officer's (and a department's) liberal interaction with citizens.…”

“…On the contrary, a central government cannot easily employ its social media as such, because it needs to treat more complex and political issues carefully with an audience scope that is broader than that of the local governments (Ma 2014). Further, Asian countries' historical experiences with their centrally controlled political system can influence the communication practices of the federal governmental ministries (Ma 2014), which may conflict with a leading officer's (and a department's) liberal interaction with citizens. The present research does not consider factors such as organizational culture as being influential to establishing citizens' trust in their government.…”

Social Media and Local Governments

“…In this chapter, we report an empirical study examining the drivers of the diffusion of one specifi c SMA, microblogging, across governments, using multisource panel data from China's 31 provinces (2010)(2011)(2012). In comparison with prior studies (Ma 2014 ;Katz and Halpern 2013 ), this study has several advantages and contributes to the literature.…”

“…The rapid and extensive use of SMAs among governments has given rise to the proliferation of research, but few studies have empirically investigated the antecedents of their adoption and diffusion Ma 2013Ma , 2014Katz and Halpern 2013 ). What drives the diffusion of SMAs?…”

Microblogging use and changes in governance

“…If 2010 was the first year of the era of microblogging in China, then 2011 is the first year of an era of government microblogging. By the end of 2011, Government agencies and civil servants opened 60,064 official accounts at dominant microblogging platforms in China (Liang, 2014). This is an increase of 231% compared with the beginning of 2011.…”