Political Will and Strategic Use of YouTube to Advancing Government Transparency: An Analysis of Jakarta Government-Generated YouTube Videos

Abstract

Abstract. Government transparency is critical to cut government bureaucracy and corruption, which diminish political accountability and legitimacy, erode trust in government, and hinder citizen engagement and government performance. Previously, Jakarta's local governments lacked government transparency, holding high-level meetings under a close-door policy, sustaining a critical and fundamental flaw in policy-making and fueling government inefficiency and corruption. Social media radically increased the speed, reach and transparency of information. Yet, social media-enabled government transparency has not been sufficiently investigated. This research presents strategic use of YouTube by Jakarta's new local government to "open doors" to high-level political meetings and other reform-oriented government activities for greater local government transparency. We conducted an analysis of 250 government-generated videos on YouTube viewed and liked by Jakarta's 7.8-million net-savvy citizens. We conclude transformational leadership's political will and strategic use of YouTube are the keys to advancing local government transparency and facilitating citizen engagement with government's reform initiatives.

Goal-Driven Context-Aware Data Filtering in IoT-Based Systems

“…In other words, government transparency in crisis communication requires strong government leadership. This result is similar with the previous studies, which find that leadership matters on transparent crisis communication [11,22,35].…”

“…There have been studies on corporate crisis communication [6,16,52], government crisis communication during natural disasters, such as the 2005 Hurricane Katrina [24] and the 2008 Sichuan earthquake [13], and factors influencing government transparency in non-crisis situations has been examined [7,9,11,22,35,47]. However, there is little research investigating the potential role of government transparency in crisis communication in influencing national and/or international public opinions during an enfolding aviation disaster.…”

Increasing Policy Success through the Use of Social Media Cross-Channels for Citizen Political Engagement

“…YouTube has been used in prior studies to examine government transparency and citizen participation [6,7]. The selection of this case is strategic because the new government, which was inaugurated on 15 October 2014, videotaped (unedited) the government's major political activities which include reform-oriented government transparency initiative (high-level political meetings, community engagement, and site visits) and non-reform-oriented political activities (press/media conferences, ceremonies, public speeches, and making/hosting honorary visits) [7]. The videos were recorded and uploaded by the Department of Communication, Informatics and Public Relation through the government's YouTube channel "PemprovDKI" to inform citizens and promoting citizens' digital interactions with government.…”

The effects of technology use on efficiency, transparency, and corruption in municipal governments

“…Different studies find that government transparency, supported by ICTs, can cut government bureaucracy and corruption [6], [19]- [22], improve trust in government [23], [24] and build up important elements of social capital [25]. An important factor to study alongside transparency is corruption [26], but the empirical evidence about the link between e-government and corruption is almost negligible [27].…”