Social Media in Public Administration’s Future

Abstract

In the DSF section of the May 2012 issue Ali Farazmand challenged the field of Public Administration with an essay on the future of its study and practice. He noted early in his discussion that he would have to exclude a discussion of impact of technology because of space limitations. Not surprisingly, one reader of his essay has sought to speak to that subject. Staci Zavattaro has taken that omission as a challenge in her essay that follows. If any other readers feel similar impulses, the floor is still open on the important topic of public administration's future. Additionally, we have a contribution from David Kasdan in which he makes some wry observations concerning the vigorous dispute he engendered by his "Great Books of Public Administration" contribution in the July 2012 issue of this journal. I think the Disputation he engendered was enlightening concerning the field of study, research, and action we call public administration, (please note I refuse to call it a discipline) and the difficulty of assessing contributions to it.

Social media adoption in local governments. The case of Poland

“…Existing definitions either enumerate social media platforms or define them. Zavattaro (2013) argues that SM include platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Vimeo, Google Plus, WikiSpaces, and more. Karakiza (2015) on the other hand define SM as "generally understood as Internet-based applications that carry consumergenerated content".…”

Promises and Pitfalls of Using Social Media in Public E-procurement: an Appraisal

“…The SM enabled networking primarily consists of user generated contents shared either openly or across specific groups of individuals (Neiger et al, 2012). Its popularity together with the convenience and user-friendliness have already been capitalised by businesses around the world to promote their products and to interact with various stakeholders including customers and suppliers (Bertot et al, 2011, Robert, 2009, Zavattaro, 2013. Research indicates that 80% of physicians, who are involved in online consultation with patients, now use SM to share medical contents (Neiger et al 2012).…”

“…The public sector has begun extracting value from SM in optimising the use of scarce public resources (Zavattaro, 2013). Furthermore, owing to its many sharing features, SMs have seen applications in many e-government efforts (Bartot, 2012, Zavattaro, 2013.…”

“…Furthermore, owing to its many sharing features, SMs have seen applications in many e-government efforts (Bartot, 2012, Zavattaro, 2013. From an e-procurement perspective, the integration of SM appears to be fairly new (Bartot, 2012).…”

“…In recent years, social media (SM) technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn are increasingly being used for low cost information transfer and wide circulation of information promptly (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2012;Neiger et al, 2012;Zavattaro, 2013). It could, therefore, be argued that SM can be considered as an emerging technological innovation which, if carefully manipulated, can help strengthen e-procurement initiatives.…”