Analyzing the Centralised Use of Multiple Social Media by Government from Innovations Diffusion Theory Perspective

Abstract

Governments have started increasingly using web 2.0 social media as a new channel of interaction with citizens in various phases of public policies lifecycle. In this direction they have started moving from simpler forms of exploitation of these strong bi-directional communication channels to more complex and sophisticated ones. These attempts constitute important innovations for government agencies, so it is necessary to analyse them from this perspective as well. This paper analyzes an advanced form of centralised use of multiple social media by government agencies from this perspective, using the well established Diffusion of Innovations Theory of Rogers. It is based on a pilot application of the above approach for conducting a consultation campaign in multiple social media concerning the large scale application of a telemedicine program of the Piedmont Regional Government, Italy. It has been concluded that this approach has the fundamental preconditions for a wide diffusion (relative advantage, compatibility with existing values and processes, reasonable complexity, trialability and observability), at least in government organizations having a tradition of bi-directional communication with citizens in all phases of policy making, and also some experience in using social media for this purpose.

Citizens' engagement on local governments' Facebook sites. An empirical analysis: The impact of different media and content types in Western Europe

“…padgets.eu), co-funded by the EU in the domain of ICT for egovernance and policy modeling, aims at implementing a prototype service for policy makers that utilizes SM technologies and techniques to authorize cross-platform publishing, content tracking and increase public engagement. Ferro et al (2013) concluded that the use of SM by government has a substantial relative advantage comparing to previous models of e-participation, due to the first step the government makes toward the citizens, rather than to wait till the citizens move their activities onto the official spaces created for e-participation (e-petitions platforms, for example).…”

“…Prior studies have investigated government's use of SM (among others, Abdelsalam, Reddick, Gamal, & Al-shaar, 2013;Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010;Bonsón, Royo, & Ratkai, 2014;Bonsón, Torres, Royo, & Flores, 2012;Ellison & Hardey, 2013, 2014Ferro, Loukis, Charalabidis, & Osella, 2013;Graham & Avery, 2013;Hofmann, Beverungen, Räckers, & Becker, 2013;Meijer & Thaens, 2013;Mossberger, Wu, & Crawford, 2013;Oliveira & Welch, 2013;Panagiotopoulos, Barnett, & Brooks, 2013;Reddick & Norris, 2013;Snead, 2013) and the use of Facebook for political engagement (Conroy, Feezell, & Guerrero, 2012;Rustad & Saebo, 2013). They have also examined the engagement on business entities Facebook pages (Bonsón & Ratkai, 2013;Dekay, 2012;Gummerus, Liljander, Weman, & Pihlström, 2012;Haigh, Brubaker, & Whiteside, 2013;Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009).…”

Passive crowdsourcing in government using social media

“…The political evaluation will be based on the wicked problems theory (Rittel and Weber, 1973;Conklin and Begeman, 1989;Conklin, 2003), and will assess to what extent it is useful for reaching wider citizens' groups and identifying particular problems/ issues they perceive concerning the particular policy under discussion, possible TG 8,2 solutions to them and relevant advantages -positive arguments -and disadvantagesnegative arguments. Furthermore, as the proposed approach is an important innovation for government, we will evaluate it from an innovation diffusion perspective using the methodology proposed by Ferro et al (2013b) and assess to what extent it has the fundamental preconditions for a wide diffusion proposed by the diffusion of innovation theory of Rogers (2003) (relative advantage, compatibility with existing values and processes, reasonable complexity, trialability and observability). In general, extensive research is required on passive crowdsourcing, examining for it all the multiple aspects that have been researched for the existing active crowdsourcing paradigm (see reviews of this research by Pedersen et al, 2013;Tarrell et al, 2013).…”

Social media governments from innovators to laggards

“…Ferro and his team [15] has made a similar research with Rogers Diffusion of Innovations Theory, conducting a consultation campaign in multiple social media concerning the large scale application of a telemedicine program of the Piedmont Regional Government, Italy. They concluded that this theory has the fundamental preconditions for a wide diffusion (relative advantage, compatibility with existing values and processes, reasonable complexity, trialability and observability), at least in government organizations having a tradition of bi-directional communication with citizens and also some experience in using social media.…”