EGovernment is an important aspect of the development of Informational World Cities, i.e. prototypical cities of the knowledge society (such as Singapore, Seoul, or Hong Kong). Government 2.0 is a generic term and describes government activities which are built on technology and social media services. But which social media services are really used by governments? An empirical investigation of 31 Informational World Cities shows which platform is popular among users and cities for government-user-interaction.

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
05.06.20131

2. www.hhu.de
Agenda
 Introduction:
 What is an Informational World City?
 Which cities are Informational World Cities?
 Government 2.0
 Methods & Research Questions
 Results for used social media services by governments
 Conclusion
05.06.20132

3. www.hhu.de
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
05.06.20133

4. www.hhu.de
Informational World Cities
(Orszullok, L., Stallmann, A., Mainka, A., & Stock, W. G., 2012).
05.06.20134

5. www.hhu.de
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)
05.06.20135

6. www.hhu.de
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
05.06.20136
BlogBlogs

7. www.hhu.de
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
05.06.20137

8. www.hhu.de
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
05.06.20138

9. www.hhu.de
Visibility of social media activity
05.06.20139
14 cities link from a speacialized social
media website to their services
28 cities link from a website to social
media services

10. www.hhu.de
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
05.06.201310
21 cities link from their homepage to social
media services
9 cities link from their homepage to a
specialized social media website

11. www.hhu.de
Linking between the services
05.06.201311

12. www.hhu.de
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
05.06.201312

13. www.hhu.de
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
05.06.201313

14. www.hhu.de
Followers and likes on social media
platforms
05.06.201314

15. www.hhu.de
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
05.06.201315

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
05.06.201316