TY - JOUR
T1 - Connecting citizens and local governments? Social media and interactivity in major U.S. cities
AU - Mossberger, Karen
AU - Wu, Yonghong
AU - Crawford, Jared
N1 - Funding Information:
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Funding Information:
Currently, Mossberger is evaluating the Smart Communities Program, a federally-funded technology training and outreach program in 5 low-income Chicago neighborhoods. With Yonghong Wu and Jared Crawford, she is also conducting a case study research on civic engagement and the use of social media and open data at the local level, to expand upon previous content analysis of U.S. local government websites. Other projects include an edited volume on the evaluation of the policy impacts of broadband, supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and a repository and conference on broadband data supported by the National Science Foundation.
PY - 2013/10
Y1 - 2013/10
N2 - Changing the relationship between citizens and government is often cited as a goal for digital government, and new tools such as social media have the potential to improve interactions with citizens through dialogue. Citizens are most likely to participate at the local level (Berry, Portney and Thomson, 1993; Oates, 1972; Oakerson, 1999), and the largest cities have traditionally been at the forefront in the adoption of e-government innovations (Moon, 2002; Ho, 2002). We examine the use of social networks and other interactive tools in the 75 largest U.S. cities between 2009 and 2011. During this period, the adoption of Facebook skyrocketed from just 13% of the cities in 2009 to nearly 87% in 2011; similarly, the use of Twitter increased from 25% to 87%. We further explore three case study cities through analysis of discussion on social networks, and interviews, and find that one-way "push" strategies (Mergel, 2013a) predominate, although there are some signs of greater openness toward dialogue with citizens.
AB - Changing the relationship between citizens and government is often cited as a goal for digital government, and new tools such as social media have the potential to improve interactions with citizens through dialogue. Citizens are most likely to participate at the local level (Berry, Portney and Thomson, 1993; Oates, 1972; Oakerson, 1999), and the largest cities have traditionally been at the forefront in the adoption of e-government innovations (Moon, 2002; Ho, 2002). We examine the use of social networks and other interactive tools in the 75 largest U.S. cities between 2009 and 2011. During this period, the adoption of Facebook skyrocketed from just 13% of the cities in 2009 to nearly 87% in 2011; similarly, the use of Twitter increased from 25% to 87%. We further explore three case study cities through analysis of discussion on social networks, and interviews, and find that one-way "push" strategies (Mergel, 2013a) predominate, although there are some signs of greater openness toward dialogue with citizens.
KW - Civic engagement
KW - Open government
KW - Social media
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84890201534&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1016/j.giq.2013.05.016
DO - 10.1016/j.giq.2013.05.016
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84890201534
SN - 0740-624X
VL - 30
SP - 351
EP - 358
JO - Government Information Quarterly
JF - Government Information Quarterly
IS - 4
ER -