Knowledge behavior model of e-government social media users

Abstract

Purpose A social media user behavior model is presented as a function of different user types, i.e. light and heavy users. The users’ behaviors are analyzed in terms of knowledge creation, framing and targeting. Design/methodological approach Data consisting of 160,000 tweets by nearly 40,000 twitter users in the city of Newark (NJ, USA) were collected during the year 2014. An analysis was conducted to examine the hypothesis that different user types exhibit distinct behaviors driven from different motivations. Findings There are three important findings of this study. First, light users reuse existing content more often, while heavy and automated users create original content more often. Light users also use more sentiments than the heavy and automated users. Second, automated users frame more than heavy users, who frame more than light users. Third, light users tend to target a specific audience, while heavy and automated users broadcast to a general audience. Research implications Decision-makers can use this study to improve communication with their customers (the public) and allocate resources more effectively for better public services. For example, they can better identify subsets of users and then share and track specialized content to these subsets more effectively. Originality/value Despite the broad interest, there is insufficient research on many aspects of social media use, and very limited empirical research examining the relevance and impact of social media within the public sector. The social media user behavior model was established as a framework that can provide explanations for different social media knowledge behaviors exhibited by various subsets of users, in an e-government context.

User roles for emergency management in social media: Understanding actors' behavior during the 2018 Majorca Island flash floods

“…User roles denote the composition of audiences and conversational sources in social media. In opposition to previous social media functionality models, scholars using user role taxonomies suggest that there is no single type of user creating or responding to different stimuli , but a variety of them ( Shwartz-Asher et al, 2017 ). The interest of user role taxonomies is based on the fact that they can contribute to the systematization of user variability ( Congosto, 2018 ).…”

“…In some cases, audience mapping has been carried out using vague or generic groupings ( Bonsón et al, 2015 ; Colineau, Paris, & Vander Linden, 2012 ; Mahler & Regan, 2011 ). In other cases, they have not provided relevant information about the expected behavior towards agents of the public sector, with some noticeable exceptions ( Shwartz-Asher et al, 2017 ; Wukich et al, 2019 ).…”

“…Hence, the study of user categories based on certain characteristics of the audiences could facilitate our understanding in relation to certain events ( González-Bailón et al, 2013 ). In studies about social media and the public sector this type of classifications and attention to user behavior are uncommon ( Medaglia & Zheng, 2017 ; Shwartz-Asher et al, 2017 ). Studies about social media and emergencies have published role taxonomies, taking different perspectives depending on their focus on citizens or authorities, or their relationship with the physical or virtual spaces ( Reuter & Kaufhold, 2018 ).…”

“…With social media “audiencing” we refer to the public performance of belonging to the distributed audience for a concrete event ( Highfield, Harrington, & Bruns, 2013 ). We argue that if authorities need to appropriately interact with different audiences during a crisis situation ( Marwick & Boyd, 2011 ; Shwartz-Asher, Chun, & Adam, 2017 ; Spence et al, 2015 ), it will be of paramount importance to define an early starting point based on characteristics of different groups of actors and phases in the crisis. One of the possibilities could be to explore how these actors behave according to how they use the functionalities of the platform (i.e., sharing or replying) ( González-Bailón et al, 2013 ; Reuter et al, 2013 ; Tinati, Carr, Hall, & Bentwood, 2012 ).…”

Social Media-Based E-Government Application Feature

“…In addition, the application was made also because it was difficult to get people to participate in the decisionmaking process. The solution is to make social media as a place to get information from the community and integrate social media in a formal process for the decision-making process [33]. Social media itself is an effective and efficient means to convey information to other parties.…”