Determinants of the Citizen Engagement Level of Mayors on Twitter

Abstract

Today, politicians like other political actors use social media to interact with their audiences. In the relevant literature, studies on the use of social media by politicians focus more on how politicians use social media for political communication during the election periods and its impact on the election results. Furthermore, these studies mainly focus on national politicians. Few studies focus on the use of social media during a non-election period by the local politicians, and these studies analyse the purpose of using social media. Therefore, in the relevant literature, there is a need for empirical studies to measure the citizen engagement level of local politicians during the non-election period and analyse its determinants beyond the purpose of using social media. In this context, this study aims to analyse the relationship between some factors and the level of citizen engagement of the mayors on Twitter in Turkey. The findings of the analysis show that there is a relationship between the status of municipalities and the engagement level of mayors.

Local governments’ communication on social media platforms: refining and assessing patterns of adoption in Belgium

“…The nonsignificant association between the mayors' characteristics and active adoption of Facebook partly match the findings presented in previous studies. For instance, Hatipoğlu et al (2020) did not find any significant relationship between this variable and engagement on Twitter.…”

“…The non-significant association between the mayors' characteristics and active adoption of Facebook partly match the findings presented in previous studies. For instance, Hatipoğlu et al (2020) did not find any significant relationship between this variable and engagement on Twitter. This difference could be explained by the fact that adoption is a former step compared with engagement, which is much more influenced by personal willingness.…”

The Development of Social Media Intelligence System for Citizen Opinion and Perception Analysis over Government Policy

“…Metrik teresbut terdiri atas tiga dimensi tersebut adalah popularity, commitment dan virality yang dikalkulasi dari jumlah like, follower, share/retweet dan comment masyarakat pada akun media sosial yang dimiliki suatu instansi pemerintahan. Metrik citizen engagement index ini kemudian menjadi landasan untuk penelitian-penelitian yang lebih aplikatif terkait dengan analitik media sosial, khususnya antara pemerintah dengan masyarakat [20]- [22]. Diluar metrik tersebut beberapa penelitian langsung mengkalkulasi tiga aspek eksplisit yakni comment, likes dan share untuk menghitung engagement [23], [24] maupun comment dan share saja [25] untuk mengkalkulasi engagement masyarakat pada akun media sosial instansi pemerintahan.…”