Social media policies as responses for social media affordances: The case of China

Dialogic communication on local government social media during the first wave of COVID-19: Evidence from the health commissions of prefecture-level cities in China

Although some scholars have explored the level and determinants of Dialogic Communication on Government Social Media (DCGSM), none have conducted their studies in the context of public crisis. The current study contributes to the understanding on DCGSM by 16,822 posts crawled from the official Sina Weibo accounts of 104 Chinese health commissions in prefecture-level cities during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that Chinese local government agencies have great variations in their DCGSM during the pandemic and the overall performance is poor. Furthermore, Chinese local governments prefer to conserve visitors and generate return visits, rather than dialogic loops development and the usefulness of information enhancement. The findings suggest that both public pressure and peer pressure contribute to the DCGSM of Chinese local governments during the public health crisis. In addition, the effect of public pressure is stronger than that of the peer pressure, indicating that local government agencies have experienced more demand-pull DCGSM.

Promoting public engagement with household waste separation through government social media: A case study of Shanghai

Government agencies around the world are increasingly using social media to promote public engagement with government-initiated activities, such as Household Waste Separation (HWS). However, existing studies fail to examine how governments can use their official social media accounts to promote public engagement with HWS. This pioneering study investigates the effects of dialogic loop, media richness, content theme, and emotional valence on public engagement with HWS through Government Social Media (GSM). Moreover, the influencing mechanisms are explored by examining the moderating role of social media capital. In total, 1795 posts were scraped from the official Sina Weibo accounts of seventeen Shanghai governments and later analyzed. Results reveal that dialogic loop positively predicts public engagement with HWS through GSM, but media richness negatively affects public engagement. Content themes have significantly different impacts on the level of public engagement with HWS through GSM. Unexpectedly, the effect of emotional valence is not significant. This study is the first of its kind to demonstrate the moderating role of social media capital which is seen to weaken the positive effect of dialogic loop on public engagement with HWS through GSM and mitigate the negative effect of media richness.

Dynamic sentiment sensing of cities with social media data

Purpose

A lot of people share their living or travelling experiences about cities by writing posts on social media. Such posts carry multi-dimensional information about the characteristics of cities from the public’s perspective. This paper aims at applying text mining technology to automatically extract city images, which are known as how observers perceive the status of the city, from these social media texts.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper proposes a data processing pipeline for automatic city image extraction and applies sentiment analysis, timing analysis and contrastive analysis in a case study on Wuhan, a central China megacity. Specifically, the city image constructed with social media text and the expected policy outcomes by the government are compared.

Findings

Results reveal gaps between the public’s impression and the strategic goals of the government in traffic and environment.

Originality/value

This study contributes a novel approach to assess government performance by complementary data from social media. This case study implies the value of social media-based city image in the identification of gaps for the optimization of government performance.

A Case Of Affordances-Collaborative Governance Using Smartphones

This study attempts to explore the contextual factors that play a significant role in promoting collaborative governance using mobile phones in developing countries. The study utilises review of academic literature and experts’ opinion to identify critical conversion factors and their interrelationship. Affordance Theory is used as a theoretical lens to identify eight significant factors covering development of infrastructure, citizen up-skilling, cost of access, ease of use, reliable infrastructure, ensured privacy & security, process accountability and a standardised m-governance policy. A combination of Total Interpretative Structure Modelling (TISM) and Cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) analysis is employed to prioritise these conversion factors and classify them based on their dependence and driving power. A priority-based hierarchical model is proposed for establishing a sustainable m-governance ecosystem.

Organizational models for social media institutionalization: An exploratory analysis of Dutch local governments

Social media institutionalization in public administrations has been conceptualized as the final stage of the adoption process. However, an understanding of organizational models for social media institutionalization in public administration is lacking. This exploratory study of Dutch local governments contributes to the literature by identifying how governments organize social media institutionalization. Drawing on an original questionnaire on social media adoption, two advanced cases were selected based on their high level of social media institutionalization: Utrecht and Eindhoven. For each case, in-depth semi structured interviews were carried out aiming at detecting institutionalization patterns. Our study highlights that, in contrast with the literature on stages of technological maturity, social media institutionalization shows two different organizational models: a centralized model, based on trust, with highly structured and formalized policy guides, low experimentation, formal training and evaluation supported by standardized reports; and a distributed model, based on control, with simple guiding principles, higher levels of experimentation, training build on a “learn by doing” basis, and individual evaluation mechanisms. These results enrich current academic understanding of social media institutionalization and may guide public officials involved in social media institutionalization practices.

Social media use for public engagement during the water crisis in Cape Town

This study examines social media use for public engagement during the Cape Town water crisis in South Africa. The study applies technology affordance and attribution theories to explore social media features (affordances) utilised by local authorities and the public, meanings embedded in the social media posts and the attributions of the water crisis cause among the actors. Data gathering and analysis followed mixed methods. Qualitative data were gathered using key informant interviews and netnography (data scrapping on Twitter) while a household survey (n= 96) was conducted to obtain quantitative data. The university research committee and City of Cape Town issued ethical clearances. During the water crisis, metavoicing, persistent engagement and visibility emerged as social media affordances. Social media posts reflected societal dynamics and attributed the crisis as external, unstable, and controllable. These findings are critical towards handling future crises and suggest collaborative efforts as the desirable action.

Social media for government information dissemination: content, characteristics and civic engagement

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine the information distributed on social media by government ministries. In addition, this study seeks to categorize and identify the characteristics of the highest engaging government social media posts.

Design/methodology/approach

This article is based on content analysis to examine the work of Israeli government ministries on Facebook. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze 6,292 posts posted over a six-month period, and a sample of 230 of the most popular posts was analyzed qualitatively.

Findings

Findings indicate that government ministries primarily direct and link to internal Facebook pages, with few, if any, referrals to official government websites. In addition, the types of content that generate the highest levels of engagement are classified as operations and events or symbolic acts (e.g. greetings or condolences) and are containing visual content as photos or video clips.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the literature on the topic in several ways. First, it presents findings from a cross-national study of government authorities and organizations that operate and serve diverse populations in a multicultural country. Second, this study presents a novel examination of information strategies by government organizations with focusing on the characteristics of links, media types, content and posting frequency.

Promoting Public Engagement during the COVID-19 Crisis: How Effective Is the Wuhan Local Government's Information Release?

During times of public crises (such as COVID-19), governments must act swiftly to release crisis information effectively and efficiently to the public. This paper provides a general overview of the way that the Wuhan local government use Weibo as a channel to engage with their citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the media richness, dialogic loop, and a series of theoretically relevant factors, such as content type, text length, and information source, we try to examine how citizen engage with their local government. By analyzing the data mining samples from Wuhan Release, the official Sina Weibo account of Wuhan's local government, results show that, despite the unstable situation COVID-19 over the crisis, there exist three stages of a crisis on the whole. Combining the behavior of the government and the public, duration from 31 December 2019 to 19 January 2020 could be seen as the development period, then the outbreak period (30 January 2020 to 28 February 2020), and a grace period (29 February 2020 to19 April 2020). Public attention to different types of information changes over time, but curbing rumors has always been a priority. Media richness features partially influent citizen engagement. Text length is significantly positively associated with citizen engagement through government social media. However, posts containing information sources have a negative impact on citizen engagement.

Utilising Enterprise Social Media for Product Innovation: The Role of Market Orientation

The literature on the role of enterprise social media (ESM) utilisation in driving the innovation profiles of organisations has not provided an understanding of the mechanisms of this positive relationship. By conceptualising ESM as including internal and external social media use, this study examined the mediating role of market orientation strategies in the link between ESM use and product innovation. The results of structural equation modeling, among a sample of organisations based in South Africa, show that ESM use positively affects the market orientation strategies of companies and these have a positive effect on product innovation. While inter-functional coordination does not mediate the external social media–product innovation link, it does so in the internal social media–product innovation link. These results imply that organisations that wish to pursue product innovation (and perhaps strategies of differentiation) should use ESM, leveraging their value in knowledge generation and assimilation.

Pregnancy-Related Information Seeking and Sharing in the Social Media Era Among Expectant Mothers: Qualitative Study

Background

Social media has become the most popular communication tool used by Chinese citizens, including expectant mothers. An increasing number of women have adopted various forms of social media channels, such as interactive websites, instant messaging, and mobile apps, to solve problems and obtain answers to queries during pregnancy. Although the use of the internet by pregnant women has been studied extensively worldwide, limited research exists that explores the changing social media usage habits in China, where the 1 child policy ended in 2015.

Objective

This study aimed to (1) present the status quo of pregnancy-related information seeking and sharing via social media among Chinese expectant mothers, (2) reveal the impact of social media usage, and (3) shed light on pregnancy-related health services delivered via social media channels.

Methods

A qualitative approach was employed to examine social media usage and its consequences on pregnant women. A total of 20 women who had conceived and were at various stages of pregnancy were interviewed from July 20 to August 10, 2017. Thematic analysis was conducted on the collected data to identify patterns in usage.

Results

Overall, 80% (16/20) of participants were aged in their 20s (mean 28.5 years [SD 4.3]). All had used social media for pregnancy-related purposes. For the seeking behavior, 18 codes were merged into 4 themes, namely, gravida, fetus, delivery, and the postpartum period; whereas for sharing behaviors, 10 codes were merged into 4 themes, namely, gravida, fetus, delivery, and caretaker. Lurking, small group sharing, bad news avoidance, and cross-checking were identified as the preferred patterns for using social media. Overall, 95% (19/20) of participants reported a positive mental impact from using social media during their pregnancy.

Conclusions

It is indisputable that social media has played an increasingly important role in supporting expectant mothers in China. The specific seeking and sharing patterns identified in this study indicate that the general quality of pregnancy-related information on social media, as well as Chinese culture toward pregnancy, is improving. The new themes that merge in pregnancy-related social media use represent a shift toward safe pregnancy and the promotion of a more enjoyable pregnancy. Future prenatal care should provide further information on services related to being comfortable during pregnancy and reducing the inequality of social media–based services caused by the digital divide.

Sustainability of Government Social Media: A Multi-Analytic Approach to Predict Citizens’ Mobile Government Microblog Continuance

Attracting citizens and facilitating their continued usage is critical for the sustainable development of mobile government microblog services. Drawing on the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) framework and the literature related to perceived value, this study investigates the factors that affect citizens’ continuance intention vis-a-vis mobile government microblogs from a value-based perspective. A structural equation modeling (SEM)-neural network combined method was used to test the proposed model by using data collected from 301 mobile government microblog users in China. The SEM analysis shows that social influence, perceived interactivity, and perceived mobility positively affect citizens’ utilitarian value and hedonic value, which further affects their continuance intention. The significant factors obtained from the SEM are used as input for a neural network analysis to calculate their relative impacts. The results of the neural network analysis showed that perceived mobility is the most important factor influencing utilitarian value, while social influence is the most significant factor affecting hedonic value. The normalized importance of utilitarian value on continuance behaviors is larger than that of hedonic value.

How to Foster Citizen Reblogging of a Government Microblog

This article examines the strategies used to foster citizens' interaction with government microblogs. While government agencies are urged to adopt social media, little is known about how citizens respond to those efforts. Using data collected from the publicity microblogs of prefecture-level municipalities in China, this article indicates that government microblogs can foster citizen-initiated interaction by acquiring microblog influencers as followers, diversifying the sources of government posts and posting more multimedia content. However, regularly updating a government microblog is not necessarily associated with citizen participation.

Governments’ social media use for external collaboration

Purpose

As social media technologies permeate public life, the current forms of collaboration between government and non-government stakeholders are changing. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how social media use reconfigures the organizing practices around such collaboration. A case study of a collaborative e-government project showcases how emergent organizing practices through external social media differ from existing ones along the dimensions of time, task, team and transition.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper presents a case study of a collaborative e-government project on open data, organized by Shanghai Municipality, local businesses, universities and non-governmental organizations, using an external social media platform, WeChat. Adopting the theoretical lens of temporary organization, the paper identifies the key aspects of change emerged in the organizing practices of this collaboration.

Findings

The findings outline how the use of external social media reconfigures the collaboration between government and non-government stakeholders along the four dimensions of time, task, team and transition. The new form of collaboration is reconfigured along the lines of (1) an ad hoc and non-linear management of time; (2) discursive task creation, assignment and engagement among stakeholders; (3) a serendipitous engagement of team members based on expertise; and (4) a shift in formal and informal organizing practices.

Originality/value

This paper provides insights on the use of external social media for collaboration in e-government research and develops the concept of temporary organization in a sociomaterial setting. It also provides practical suggestions on how to manage new forms of public projects leveraging on the capacity of external social media.