Strategic communication? Measurement and evaluation of Twitter use among municipal governments |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State University, 2809 Saucon Valley Rd, Center Valley, PA 18034, USA;2. Department of Corporate Communications, Penn State University, 120 Ridge View Drive, Dunmore, PA 18512, USA;3. School of Public Affairs, Penn State University, 200 University Drive, Schuylkill Haven, PA 17972, USA;1. FSA ULaval, Université Laval, Pavillon Palasis-Prince, 2325 rue de la Terrasse, Quebec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada;1. Department of Organization, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Organization and Informatics Vara?din, Pavlinska 2, 42 000 Vara?din, Croatia;2. College of Arts and Sciences, Carlow University, 3333 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States;1. Associate Professor and Director, School of Planning, Public Policy, and Management, University of Oregon, 263 Hendricks Hall, 1209 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, United States of America;2. Associate Professor, School of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH 44115, United States of America;1. Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India;2. Bournemouth University Business School, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, BH8 8EB, UK;3. Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500AE Enschede, the Netherlands.;1. Smart City Institute at the HEC School of Management, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium;2. ECO-SOS Department of Economics, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain |
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| Abstract: | Government entities utilize social media to communicate with primary, secondary, and tertiary constituents. The microblog Twitter serves as a rapid and inexpensive means of communication, allowing municipal governments to reach a large and diverse audience with limited time or resource costs. Lacking in the existing research are examinations of whether governments are using social media outlets like Twitter as strategic communication tools or merely as ad-hoc communication outlets. By applying the Barcelona Principles 3.0 as the theoretical framework, this study explores whether U.S. municipalities measure and evaluate their Twitter activity as part of a formal communications process informed by modern public relations standards, an whether differences in municipal resources and demographics predict the integration of social media measurement and evaluation. The results suggest that while formal communication plans are reported to exist, there is not a sufficient presence of goals, policies, procedures, and metrics to consider Twitter a formal, strategic communication tool for participating municipalities. Total population and the administrative role of the social media account manager were also found to impact the perception of defined procedures and specific assessment metrics. Though these results suggest a lack of formal integration of social media measurement and evaluation, more research is needed to explore the factors which may impact this situation. |
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