How to strengthen the social media interactivity of e-government

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how to use social media in e-government to strengthen interactivity between government and the general public. Design/methodology/approach – Categorizing the determinants to interactivity covering depth and breadth into two aspects that are the structural features and the content features, this study employs general linear model and ANOVA method to analyse 14,910 posts belonged to the top list of the 96 most popular government accounts of Sina, one of the largest social media platforms in China. Findings – The main findings of the research are that both variables of the ratio of multimedia elements, and the ratio of external links have positive effects on the breadth of interactivity, while the ratio of multimedia features, and the ratio of originality have significant effects on the depth of interactivity. Originality/value – The contributions are as follows. First, the authors analyse the properties and the topics of government posts to draw a rich picture of how local governments use the micro-blog as a communications channel to interact with the public. Second, the authors conceptualize the government online interactivity in terms of the breadth and depth. Third, the authors identify factors that will enhance the interactivity from two aspects: structural features and content features. Lastly, the authors offer suggestions to local governments on how to strengthen the e-government interactivity in social media.

Developing the Dimensions of a Social Content Management Framework

“…To innovate services from the perspective of service science, organizations need to go beyond their existing roles, namely, the participation of multiple actors [19]. This condition could be linked to the activities taking place in social media interactions, namely, the involvement and interaction of various actors on the social media platform [2], [20]. Social media enables more customer involvements in assisting organizations to deliver service innovations through the process of engagement.…”

A review on antecedents of citizen's trust in government social media services

“…In recent years the development of e-government services has migrated from static websites to social media, which is considered as part of Web 2.0 platform [3]. As stated by Hao, Zheng and Zeng [4], the benefits of social media are not limited only to individuals and private sectors organizations. Social media also provides unique opportunities for government organizations to make effective use of it to provide services to citizen's as per their desire and needs.…”

“…The government use of social media is supported to strengthen citizen's interactivity [9], increase government transparency [10] and perception of trustworthiness [11]. However, the efforts of governments and the potential value of government social media services cannot be displayed without addressing citizens willingness and their trust to participate in these services [4,8]. Several studies have been conducted to investigate the relationship of trust between people and government [1,12].…”

“…Very little attention has been paid on citizen's trust perspective in online government services [12]. On the contrary there is very little research on using social media as a technology in government organizations [4]. Despite of increased popularity in using social media by governments across the world, its acceptance among citizen's is still a serious issue and has not gained much attention in previous studies [16].…”

“…Prior studies have identified trust as a significant factor in using social media or social networking sites at user level [17] and firm level [18] but have failed to cover multiple perspective of citizen's trust in context of using government social media services. Some studies have also investigated the relationship of social media with interactivity [4], participation [4] and to increase citizen's trust on institutions and their services [5,9]. However, the major contributors or factors of citizen's trust to participate in government social media services are still unexplored.…”