Social Media for Government

Theory and Practice

Staci Zavattaro, Thomas Bryer, Staci M. Zavattaro, Thomas A. Bryer, Staci Zavattaro, Thomas Bryer, Staci M. Zavattaro, Thomas A. Bryer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781498704564
• eBook ISBN: 9781317286387
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Social media is playing a growing role within public administration, and with it, there is an increasing need to understand the connection between social media research and what actually takes place in government agencies. Most of the existing books on the topic are scholarly in nature, often leaving out the vital theory-practice connection. This book joins theory with practice within the public sector, and explains how the effectiveness of social media can be maximized. The chapters are written by leading practitioners and span topics like how to manage employee use of social media sites, how emergency managers reach the public during a crisis situation, applying public record management methods to social media efforts, how to create a social media brand, how social media can help meet government objectives such as transparency while juggling privacy laws, and much more. For each topic, a collection of practitioner insights regarding the best practices and tools they have discovered are included. Social Media for Government responds to calls within the overall public administration discipline to enhance the theory-practice connection, giving practitioners space to tell academics what is happening in the field in order to encourage further meaningful research into social media use within government.

Part I
Social Media in Government

An Introduction

Introduction and Overview

Staci M. Zavattaro

Warren Kagarise had a daunting task when he began his job as a Communications Coordinator for the City of Issaquah: launch a strategic social media presence. Kagarise, who was formerly a reporter for the Seattle suburb’s local newspaper, crossed over into the city government to start this digital communications strategy. Truly, that was the only direction he had when starting this journey toward social media development. Kagarise spent months researching the city’s demographics, speaking with other social media managers in the area, and developing policies and practices for operating the social platforms. Finally, he and the communications staff made public presences on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Eventually, that arsenal grew to include Vine, Pinterest, Foursquare, and Google+. Viewing the City’s website (www.ci.issaquah.wa.us) reveals links to the social sites and a video explaining the city’s goals and objectives with the platforms.

Today, Kagarise and the communications team are trying to stay up to date with the latest information communication technology developments. Recently, Kagarise discussed with us how city officials might capitalize on Meerkat or Periscope, which are live-streaming applications that work in conjunction with Twitter feeds. Possibilities included live streaming events such as the local farmer’s market, city meetings, or even daily glimpses into what city employees do each day. Some concerns regarding the technology remained, such as privacy and even the necessity of the tool. That is a question many social media coordinators face: why do this? Kagarise details his journey within the pages of this edited volume, illustrating how Issaquah began its social media journey and how the city continues to grow through these various media.

Social media are understood here as “technologies that facilitate social interaction, make possible collaboration, and enable deliberation across stakeholders” (Bryer & Zavattaro, 2011, p. 328). Social media platforms include, but certainly are not limited to, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Vine, Pinterest, blogs, wikis and more. Criado, Sandoval-Alazman, and Gil-Garcia (2013) define several functions of the social media sites:

social networking (e.g., Facebook), microblogging (e.g., Twitter), multimedia sharing (e.g., YouTube), virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life), mashups and open data (e.g., Data.gov), questioning tools (e.g., Quora), crowdsourcing (e.g., Mechanical Turk), collaboration tools (e.g., Peer-to-Patent and Wiki Government), tagging (e.g., Digg), and content syndication (e.g., RSS).

(Criado et al., 2013, p. 320)

The authors go on to note that government agencies should set clear goals when it comes to deploying a social media strategy, lest administrators get caught engaging with trendy technology without purpose.

Social media tools are not inherently social. Designers of the platforms can decide how much—or how little—interaction to build in (Bryer & Zavattaro, 2011; DeSanctis & Poole, 1994). For many government agencies, this inter-activity continues to be a constant debate about power sharing and power preserving (Bryer, 2013; Hand & Ching, 2011; Mergel, 2013a, 2013b). Public administrators often view social media as panaceas to increase citizen engagement and participation given that people can use tools 24 hours a day, seven days a week (Meijer, 2015). Additionally, most people can access social media via cellphones, but this accessibility does not cover the entire population (Smith, 2015). Seemingly, social media managers in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors might be using the adage, “if you build it they will come.” Questions, however, remain about this normative assumption: Is it correct? Do people want to engage with government and nonprofit agencies via social media? If so, how? If not, why not?

This edited volume tackles these questions in a variety of ways. The book is unique in that it brings together scholar and practitioner voices to explore the growing trend of social media use in the public and nonprofit sectors. Focusing on these two sectors (public and nonprofit) is important given the explosion of agencies deploying the social sites. At the federal government level in the United States, President Obama began his time in office by issuing a memorandum calling for open government, transparency, and citizen participation (Orszag, 2009). Since then, the White House has capitalized upon the social technologies available by trying Google Hangouts, Twitter Town Halls, and We the People, an online petition site that allows citizens to post ideas that, if given enough support, are taken to the president for potential action. Local governments, too, are adopting and adapting various social media technologies with mixed success (Bonsón, Torres, Royo, Flores, 2012; Hand & Ching, 2011; Mossberger, Wu, & Crawford, 2013; Oliveira & Welch, 2013; Zavattaro, French, & Mohanty, 2015).

At the nonprofit level, organizations are also beginning to harness the power of social media for charitable purposes or to increase awareness of issues (Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009). During 2014, the Ice Bucket Challenge went viral, with people from across the world pouring buckets of cold water over their heads to raise awareness for ALS, commonly called Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Not only did the challenge go viral, the organization also raised $220 million from the campaign (ALS Association, 2015), which an individual with ALS began to raise awareness of the disease and raise funds for a cure. The trend of nonprofit organizations using social media continues to grow. As an example, Briones, Kuch, Liu, & Jin (2011) describe how the American Red Cross builds relationships with its audiences via social media. Interactivity and dialogue are used, the authors find, to connect with younger donors and volunteers. The challenge remains, however, not alienating older audiences and developing the technical know-how to execute social media properly (Briones et al., 2011).

Given the growth in social media use within the public and nonprofit sectors, this book is a timely exploration into both opportunities and challenges associated with the tools.

Contributions to the Volume

We have organized the volume into two major parts, on the themes of internal organizational social media use and external social media use. By internal organizational use, we mean the way in which organizations in the public and nonprofit sectors are using social media tools to conduct their affairs. External social media use means the ways in which organizations can use the social media platforms to communicate organizational messages to various publics. It is within this part that practitioner voices really shine to give context to the academic writings.

Internal Organizational Social Media Use

In Part II, “Social Media: Internal Management and Issues,” we include chapters from Martinella Dryburgh and Karabi Bezboruah; Cayce Myers; Patricia Franks; Staci Zavattaro; Warren Kagarise; Lindsay Crudele; Nicole Elias and Peter Federman; and Ray Parr.

We begin with Dryburgh and Bezboruah’s chapter, which provides a broad and important overview of social media policies and practices related to employees’ participation in the digital commons. They explore the idea of a digital commons as a space where people can come together to embody de Tocqueville’s notion of civil society. Digital commons are spaces where technology allows for the sharing of information and knowledge in a continuous fashion. Using the example of Dallas, Texas, Dryburgh and Bezboruah explain how city officials there are creating a digital commons through various social media offerings. They conclude with an important discussion regarding how the digital commons blurs lines between public and private lives and the influence this has especially on government employees.

Chapter 2 comes from Myers, a public relations scholar, to explain the relationship between Federal Trade Commission (FTC) policies and social media content. He details how digital technologies often confound the differences between public relations and advertising, making it difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. Within social media, Myers points out how this process often is more confusing when it is unclear if, for example, tweets are promoted advertisements for a particular company or product. While the FTC is chiefly concerned with private business, regulations still apply to nonprofit organizations. Myers explains how nonprofit organizations’ social media coordinators can better understand the regulations to avoid potential pitfalls and legal trouble.

In Chapter 3, we continue with important internal organizational policies regarding social media and records management. Franks, a leading expert on records management, details how social media changed the records management landscape by adding another layer of required maintenance. Franks details the rules and regulations that govern public sector records management related to social media. Practitioners will find particularly helpful her checklist for managing social media-related records. Her tips include developing a strategic plan related to records management, identifying records and non-records, outlining a maintenance schedule, and evaluating the entire process to know when corrections are needed.

Chapter 4 from Zavattaro concerns how organizations can develop and maintain a brand identity via social media. Essentially, this is important for public and nonprofit organizations alike to maintain continuity and trustworthiness. If someone comes across a social media site and they are unsure of its origins, they are likely to click elsewhere for the information. Tools from both corporate and place branding can help maintain this continuity across platforms, as well as ensure messaging matches up. This match comes from internal understanding of social media’s role within the organization.

Chapters 5 and 6 are our first practitioner chapters. The first is by Kagarise, the City of Issaquah communications coordinator mentioned at the outset of this chapter. While Kagarise mostly details external communications, he also sheds light on the logic behind decisions to use social media platforms in specific, strategic ways. In the next chapter, Crudele tells the story of how the City of Boston launched and used social media.

Chapters 7 and 8 work together to explain the growing use of dashboards in the U.S. federal government. Elias and Federman undertake a detailed analysis of how the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) uses dashboards to aggregate, understand, explain, and share data with internal and external audiences alike. Parr, a personnel psychologist with OPM, gives a practitioner perspective on these useful new tools.

External Social Media Use

Chapters in the next part, “Social Media: External Relations,” come from Lori Brainard; Stephanie Slater; Clayton Wukich and Alan Steinberg; Suzanne Frew and Alisha Griswold; Rowena Briones, Melissa Janoske, and Stephanie Madden; Greg Higgerson, Melissa Kear, Maria Shanley, and Dave Krepcho; Arthur Sementelli; and Thomas Bryer. As readers will see, each chapter deals with a specific aspect of public administration and nonprofit management such as emergency management, law enforcement, and nonprofit outreach. Chapters from Bryer and Sementelli take a critical look at social media use in government, painting a picture of sometimes problematic uses of the tools. We felt chapters such as these were important to include to ensure scholars and practitioners alike have a full picture regarding not only the benefits of social media but some of the pitfalls as well.

Chapter 9 details how police departments in the Washington, DC, area deploy various social media tools to engage residents in policing decisions and activities. Brainard uses this chapter to build upon her previous work in the subject, detailing here how the D.C. police precincts have either expanded or shrunk their social media offerings throughout the past decade. Brainard’s chapter is particularly valuable given the longitudinal nature of the study, allowing readers to understand how and why the department has changed its social media strategies through time. She finds that police departments might be missing a crucial opportunity to engage residents by controlling most of the conversation. (The #MyNYPD campaign on Twitter, though, serves as a counterbalance to this important point. When the police Twitter account asked people to share stories of their interactions with police officers using the #MyNYPD hashtag, many respondents posted pictures of police using force, thus removing control from the department and placing it with the people.) As Brainard points out, social media are becoming crucial tools for police departments to repair shattered perceptions throughout the country in light of increased police violence.

Chapter 10 presents a grounded practitioner view of how a specific police department has used Twitter and other social media tools to build relations with community and enhance trust in the police. Slater discusses the Boynton Beach (Florida) Police Department’s innovative strategies when it comes to engaging with the public via social media.

Chapter 11, from Wukich and Steinberg, describes ways in which emergency managers are using social media tools to communicate with relevant publics before, during, and after emergency situations. They find that most information about emergency management on social media relates to disaster prevention rather than mitigation. Within the chapter, Wukich and Steinberg detail three strategies that emergency management organizations are using social media to communicate with external publics: information dissemination, situational awareness via social media monitoring, and interaction with users to generate real-time information. They detail how each strategy manifests within emergency management, prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.

In Chapter 12, Frew and Griswold provide the emergency management practitioner perspective. They detail fundamental shifts in communication strategies, noting how social media plays a continuous role in this communications movement. They detail several benefits of using social media during emergency situations: relationship building, communication improvement, research expansion, and situational awareness. Practitioners from all kinds of organizations can find useful tips and tricks in this chapter, especially considering that all emergencies are not natural or man-made disasters. Organizations going through a leadership crisis, for example, can take hints from Frew and Griswold when it comes to correcting potentially negative images.

In Chapter 13, Briones, Janoske, and Madden employ a case study approach to understand the success and failure of nonprofit social media campaigns. They compare and contrast the aforementioned ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign. Using the concept of hashtag activism, Briones and her colleagues offer nonprofit scholars and practitioners a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Front1
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Social Media in Government An Introduction
• Part II Social Media Internal Management and Issues
• Part III Social Media External Relations
• Part IV Social Media in Government Future Directions
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Index