CeDEM13 Day 2 / Social and Mobile Media for Public Administration, SE 0.3, Chair: Sylvia Archmann, Norbert Kersting

1. www.hhu.de
Government Activities in Social Media
An Empirical Investigation of eGovernments in
Informational World Cities
Sarah Hartmann, Agnes Mainka & Isabella Peters
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (Germany)
Department of Information Science
{s.hartmann | agnes.mainka | isabella.peters}@uni-duesseldorf.de
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2. www.hhu.de
Agenda
§ Introduction:
§ What is an Informational World City?
§ Which cities are Informational World Cities?
§ eGovernment/Government 2.0
§ Methods & Research Questions
§ Results for used social media services by governments
§ Conclusion
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Introduction: Informational Cities
§ Prototypical cities of the knowledge society are
called Informational Cities (Manuel Castells, 1989)
§ Infrastructures of information and communication technology
§ Political willingness
§ Position in the world city hierarchy
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space of flows
space of places
Metropolises
of the 21st
century

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Informational World Cities
(Orszullok, L., Stallmann, A., Mainka, A., & Stock, W. G., 2012).
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eGovernment/Government 2.0
§ eGovernment includes the interaction levels information,
communication, transaction, integration and participation
(Moon, 2002)
§ Government 2.0: „a more open, social, communicative,
interactive and user-centered version of e-government” (Meijer et
al., 2012)
§ The government should change its orientation to a citizen-
centered perspective by implementing services which satisfies its
customers (Eggers, 2005)
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Methods and Research Questions
§ Two groups:
§ Official government accounts for general purposes (e.g. the account
of a city’s government)
§ Governmental accounts like accounts of governmental institutions,
departments, or political persons (e.g. the mayor’s account)
§ Data collection: November 28, 2012 - January 3, 2013
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Do official government
websites link to social
media platforms?
Are there any accountsin social media servicesnot mentioned on thewebsite?
BlogBlogs

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Social media usage in Informational World
Cities
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Twitter
YouTube
Facebook
Google+
LinkedIn
Instagram
Blogs
Flickr
Pinterest
Foursquare
Vimeo
Weibo
Xing
Livestream
Ustream
numberofcities
number of cities with general
government accounts
number of cities with governmental
accounts (general, departments,
institutions and political persons)
cities = 31
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Number of used social media platform
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14 Barcelona
Melbourne
Munich
Sydney
Toronto
Amsterdam
KualaLumpur
Stockholm
Milan
Vancouver
Frankfurt
Montreal
Boston
NewYork
SanFrancisco
Seoul
Chicago
HongKong
Berlin
Dubai
Tokyo
Vienna
LosAngeles
Paris
London
Singapore
Shenzhen
Helsinki
SaoPaulo
Beijing
Shanghai
usedsocialmediaplatforms
number of used social media platforms
for general government purpose
number of used social media platforms
for all (general government, institutions,
departments, and political persons)
social media services = 15
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round about 4
services per
city

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Visibility of social media activity
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14 cities link from a speacialized social
media website to their services
28 cities link from a website to social
media services

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Visibility of social media activity
§
§ Berlin, Hong Kong, Helsinki, London, Los Angeles, Stockholm, and
Toronto use social media but have no links from their homepage
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21 cities link from their homepage to social
media services
9 cities link from their homepage to a
specialized social media website

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Linking between the services
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Backlinking from social media accounts
§ Highest backlink rates for YouTube, Pinterest, Livestream, Xing,
Weibo, and Foursquare
§ No account on Vimeo and Ustream link back and all of them are
inactive
§ Assumption: Accounts without backlinks
are no government accounts
§ Rebuttal: Inactive accounts with
backlinks on services and accounts without
backlinks linked on governments’ websites
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Backlinks approve anaccount’s governmentaffiliation, but missingbacklinks are no
disqualifier

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Activity of each city on social media
platforms
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Berlin
Seoul
Barcelona
Vienna
NewYork
Paris
Tokyo
Vancouver
Toronto
Milan
Frankfurt
Boston
Singapore
Montreal
Munich
Sydney
Amsterdam
Stockholm
Dubai
Melbourne
SanFrancisco
HongKong
Chicago
KualaLumpur
London
YouTube
Flickr
Instagram
Foursquare
Blog
Twitter
tweetspermonth
onTwitter
postedcontentpermonth
(withoutTwitter)
cities = 25
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Followers and likes on social media
platforms
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Facebook,Twitter andLinkedIn havethe mostfollowers/likes
Weibo achieves
extraordinarily high
follower numbers in
Chinese regions

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Conclusion
§ To engage in many social media services
do not have high effects on the total number of
followers/likes
§ The total activity and follower/like numbers are dominated by two
or three services at the maximum
§ Cities should continually monitor
upcoming services and evaluate their
potential for reaching particular target
audiences
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The most used
platforms are
Facebook, YouTube
and Twitter
Chinese cities have
to be analyzed
separately, because
of given political
constraints

16. www.hhu.de
Thank you for your attention!
Sarah Hartmann
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (Germany)
Department of Information Science
s.hartmann@uni-duesseldorf.de
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