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EGPA conference

Permanent Study Group 1: Information and Communications Technology in Public Administration

Social media for public engagement: a measurement model

Deborah Agostino

Politecnico di Milano

Via Lambruschini 4b

20156, Milano

Italy

Mail: deborah.agostino@polimi.it

Phone: +393485450135

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Abstract

Social media have been increasing adopted by government and local administrations all around the

world to increase interaction and dialogue with citizens. The continuous diffusion of these social

technologies in public administrations is also associated with the need to evaluate how social media

contribute to engage citizens, either fostering a one way or two-ways communication process. This

paper develops a preliminary measurement model to evaluate the contribution of social media to

public engagement, starting from extant literature in the field. The model is first theoretically

developed and then empirically applied in Italian municipalities, providing also a snapshot on social

media diffusion in the Italian context. Through the empirical application, this study proposes a

social media evaluation matrix to measure social media activity and the contribution of social

applications to public communication and participation.

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1. Introduction

Social media, such as Twitter or Facebook, represent tools that rely on web 2.0 technologies to

establish interactive and real time relationships between multiple parties. In the last years the

diffusion of these instruments have exploded all over the world with an impressive number of

people using social media daily (Nielsen, 2012). This trend has affected also public administrations

and in particular local authorities, which have been increasingly adopting social media as a potential

powerful tool to support public engagement, intended as the establishment of relationships between

government and citizens based on information sharing and dialogue (Rowe and Frewer, 2005).

This is especially visible in the U.S., where the Open Government Initiative by the Obama

administration has prompted the adoption of social media applications to increase the transparency

and openness of the government (Snead, 2013). Even without any government directive, there is

evidence on social media adoption from administrations in South America, Europe and East

countries, noticeable from the growing number of contributions from both practitioners

(Queennsland Government, 2010; State of Washington, 2010; City of Philadelphia, 2013) and

academics (Bonsòn et al., 2012; Picazo-vela et al, 2012; Yi et Al, 2013).

At the academic level, the interest on social media in government is mainly directed to understand

social media use by administrations (e.g. Bertot et al., 2012; Snead, 2013). It is widely claimed that

social media are used to facilitate interaction with citizens (OECD, 2009; Chun and Luna-Reyes,

2012; Linders, 2012), but at the same time there is few evidence on the impact of these technologies

on public engagement. An exception is the study by Bonsòn et al (2012) that provides a preliminary

evaluation on the level of corporate dialogue achieved by European local administrations. This is an

important issue given that social applications do not automatically translate into citizens

engagement (Kamal, 2009; OECD, 2009; Panagiotopoulos et al., 2011), further highlighting the

importance to measure the social media activity of public administrations and the contribution of

these technologies to public engagement.

To enhance the study of social media for public engagement, this paper aims at providing a

preliminary measurement model to evaluate the social media activity and the contribution of social

applications to citizens engagement. The following research question is here addressed: how can the

social media contribution to public engagement be measured? The model has been first theoretically

developed starting from social media measures proposed by the marketing literature (Hoffman and

Fodor, 2010) which have been revised following the public sector perspective of public engagement

(Rowe and Frewer, 2005). Then the model has been empirically applied to the Italian context of

local administrations. The web sites of all Italian municipalities, in total 119, have been analyzed

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tracing their social presences on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Results discuss first the

theoretical development of the model and then its empirical application to the Italian context, that

allows, among the other findings, to provide also a snapshot on social media diffusion in Italian

local administrations.

The paper is structured as follows: next section provides a review of extant studies on social media

in governments, with a specific focus on local administrations. Then, the dimensions of the model

are discussed starting from the theoretical contributions on public engagement (Rowe and Frewer,

2005), and on the measurement dimensions of awareness and engagement (Hoffmand and Fodor,

2010). The method section describes the phases of the study with particular reference to the

approach adopted in the empirical application of the model. The result section analyzes the findings,

providing details on the measurement model and discussing implications deriving from its

application in Italian municipalities. Finally, the discussion section describes the social media

evaluation matrix as a model that can be adopt to position administrations with respect to the social

media use for public engagement and concludes with theoretical and practical contributions of this

study.

2. Social media in governments

Social media represent web based technologies that deliver interactive platforms through which

individuals connect with each other, share comments and co-create information (Kietzmann et al,

2011; Chun and Luna-Reyes, 2012). They are defined as “a set of online tools that are designed for

and centered around social interaction” (Bertot et al., 2012: 30). Social media is a broad term which

includes several applications that varies in scope and functionalities; they comprise social

networking sites like Facebook, micro-blogging services such as Twitter, blogs, photo-sharing and

video-sharing such as YouTube or Flickr (Gilfoil, 2012). Albeit the differences in the type of

service provided, all web sites based on real time communication and interactions enter the

umbrella term of social media.

Three main features differentiate social media from traditional media: user generated content, real

time communication and multiple interactions. The first distinctive characteristics is the possibility

for users to be active creators of content rather than passively receive information. Social media

applications are based on Web 2.0, also referred to as the “Read-Write Web” (Price, 2006;

Richardson, 2006) as it enables members of the general public to actively contribute and shape the

content. The typical example is Wikipedia, which is based on the notion that any user can

participate in creating content becoming “prosumers” (both consumers and producers). The second

distinctive elements concerns the real time communication between parties that moves the dialogue

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between the parties from an offline communication to an online and instantaneous communication

between people. The third key feature is the many to many interaction approach (Porter, 2008) that

allows several users to simultaneously discuss and share information facilitating the creation of a

network of relationships. The possibility to create content and communicate in real time support the

creation of community of users, that share knowledge and ideas. These many to many interactions

within community networks blur differences between users: within the social space there is no

central authority and in the virtual community of users, all of them has the same role and

collaboratively contribute to the creation of content (Antoniadis and Grand, 2009; Buchegger and

Datta, 2009). Given these potentialities, social media have become a widely adopted instrument in a

variety of fields, such as libraries (Rutherford, 2008), private companies (Bughin and Manyika

2007), universities (Bryant, 2006; McAllister, 2012) and nonprofit organizations (Waters et al.,

2009).

Public administrations are also adopting social technologies, in particular to increase the

involvement of citizens in public decisions and life (Queennsland Government, 2010; State of

Washington, 2010; City of Philadelphia, 2013). This escalation in use has stimulated a lively debate

also at the academic level (e.g. Axelson et al., 2010; Hughes, 2011; Saebo et al., 2011; Meijer et al.,

2012; Vesnic-Aleujevic, 2012). Studies on social media use can be divided in two main categories

following the two main applications of social technologies: interaction with citizens and

transparency on government data (Bertot et al., 2012; Chun and Luna-Reyes, 2012). The first

category of studies evidences that local administrations and national bodies are engaging with social

media in order to strengthen the relationship with citizens by disseminating information or

collecting feedback from them. Empirical studies from this field are mainly based in the U.S.

(Bertot et al., 2012; Mergel, 2013; Snead, 2013), but there are some evidence also from Mexico

(Picazo-Vela et al., 2012) East countries (Yi et al, 2013) and Europe (Bonsòn et al. 2012). The more

recent U.S. studies investigated the social media adoption process and tactics (Mergel, 2013) with a

specific reference to federal government. Snead (2013) instead explored the ability of American

executive branch in using social media to establish participations, proposing guidelines for social

media adoption. Focusing on the East countries experience, Yi et al. (2013) compared the social

media use between U.S. and Korean governments highlighting the different policies between the

two countries. Picazo-Vela et al. (2012) explored the main risks and benefits associated with the

social media adoption by analyzing the experience of public servants in Mexico. Bonsòn et

al.(2012) instead compared the social media diffusion among European local administrations with

the purpose to understand whether social media promote eParticipation. Their results showed that

the most diffused social media in the sample of the European local administrations is Twitter,

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followed by YouTube and Facebook. Furthermore, they developed a Sophistication Index to rank

local administrations on the basis of their level of social media usage, showing that the local

administrations in the Netherlands are in the first position of this ranking, which is closed by

Luxembourg.

The second category of studies investigates social media with the specific focus on their role to

increase the transparency of information towards citizens (Bertot et al, 2012; Snead, 2013). The

Open Government Initiative issued in January 2009 by the Obama Administration speeded up this

process in the U.S. (Snead, 2013), justifying the huge amount of studies from this area. The

document required agencies to establish a system of transparency and public participation,

favouring the adoption of social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook of YouTube to accomplish

this requirement (Snead, 2013). Starting from the role of ICT in government organizations, Bertot et

al. (2012), discussed the opportunities of social media to favour transparency. According to the

author, “social media foster new culture of openness both by giving governments new tools to

promote transparency and reduce corruptions and by empowering members of the public to

collectively take part in monitoring the activities of their governments” (Bertot et al., 2012: 86).

These contributions suggest that social media can foster citizens participation, but they do not

automatically translate into the engagement of citizens in public administration (OECD, 2009;

Panagiotopoulos et al., 2011). With a specific focus on eParticipation, Kamal (2009) pointed out

that ICT solutions are not the answer to citizens involvement in government processes, nor that

exist a best platform that provides a directly participation of citizens. This means that it is necessary

to plan which social media to use, how to use it and how to measure the progress towards the

achievement of citizens engagement.

In summary, research to date provides useful insights on how government use social media by

analyzing the type of social media adopted, policies and impacts of these tools. However, measures

to evaluate social media activity and their contribution to public engagement are mainly neglected,

providing the rational for this research. The goal of this study is to provide a preliminary

measurement model to evaluate social media activities of local administrations by quantifying their

ability to share information and to interact with citizens. This research question is here addressed:

how can the social media contribution to public engagement be measured? The answer to these

questions has been first theoretically developed starting from extant contribution on public

engagement and social media measurement.

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3. Public engagement and the contribution of social media: dimensions of analysis

In order to develop a measurement model to evaluate social media contribution to public

engagement, the two main dimensions of analysis have been theoretically investigated: public

engagement and social media measurement.

The first element of the model is represented by the dimension of public engagement, that is

broadly defined as the involvement of citizens in public affairs (Rowe and Frewer, 2005). Since the

mid-1990s the traditional bureaucratic model of public administration has been questioned, and

business-like techniques have been introduced (Hood, 1991; 1995). A citizen-centric model (Butt

and Persuad, 2005; Kolsaker and Lee-Kelly, 2006), in which citizens are involved in all government

activities from policy formation and implementation to coproduction of services (Bovaird, 2007), is

an example of this type of model. The aim of public engagement is to establish a relationship

between public administrations and citizens which goes beyond the simple exchange of

information; the objective is to support public interaction and participation.

Different levels of citizen engagement as well as different tools to favour relations with citizens can

be found in literature. As far as the levels of engagement are concerned, the seminal paper by

Arnstein (1969) identified a ladder of citizen participation based on eight rungs, differentiated on

the basis of the extent of the citizens’ power. This framework was then customized and reshaped by

several authors over the years (e.g. Connor, 1988; Potapchuck, 1991; IAP2, 2000), each of them

emphasizing different aspects, such as the degree of government intervention or the level of

regulation of the interaction. Rowe and Frewer (2000) criticized these approaches for being too

broad leaving to variable interpretations of the phenomenon. With the purpose of simplifying the

classification of public engagement, they reorganized the previous ladders into two main categories,

public communication and public consultation, on the basis of the information flow.

Public communication is characterized by an unidirectional flow of information from the

government to citizens. It represents the lowest level of engagement because it entails a top-down

communication, in which citizens simply receive the information. Public participation instead

implies a two-way communication process between public administrations and citizens. It

represents the highest level of engagement, because it is based on dialogue and therefore on the

active role of citizens, with the final aim of collecting feedback from citizens and interacting with

them. Public communication and public participation represent the two elements that have been

here adopted to conceptualize public engagement.

The second element of the model is represented by social media measurement. The dimensions of

awareness and engagement (Hoffman and Fodor, 2010), have been introduced to evaluate the

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contribution of social technologies on public communication and public participation. These

concepts are widely diffused in the marketing field to evaluate the relationship between the brand of

a company and its customers (e.g. Andzulis et al, 2012; Gilfoil and Jobs, 2012; Smith et al., 2012).

In a similar manner, they are here used to evaluate the ability of public administrations to establish

relationships with citizens.

Awareness, in marketing, represents the exposure of the brand; it is defined as “the rudimentary

level of brand knowledge involving, at least, the recognition of the brand name” (Hoyer and Brown,

1990). The evaluation of the level of awareness represents an important objective in a social media

strategy because it allows to assess the ability of a company to achieve a critical mass of audience

(Murdough, 2009; Briggs, 2010). It is measured considering the number of users reached by social

media, with the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of the company to capture the attention of

users through information provision. Public communication has the same purpose in the public

sector: to increase the number of citizens reached by governmental information. Like brand

awareness, information in public communication also flows from public entities (analogous of

companies) towards citizens (analogous of customers). Accordingly, the higher the number of

people reached, the higher the social media awareness and the dissemination of public information.

In the same way as for the measurement of brand awareness, the evaluation of public

communication is based on the number of citizens reached by the social media.

Engagement, in marketing, is defined as “the level of a customer’s cognitive, emotional and

behavioral investment in specific brand interactions”(Hollebeek, 2011: 565). It is associated with

the objective of establishing an interactive relationship with customers on the basis of motivational

issues that go beyond purchase (van Doorn et al., 2010). Public participation entails the same

purpose: to establish and strengthen the relationship between a public administration and its

citizens. Evaluating engagement implies to consider the depth of the relationship between public

entities (companies) and its citizens (customers), by monitoring to what extent interactions on social

media are active. The purpose of this evaluation is to examine consumers’ propensity to include

important brands as part of how they view themselves (Sprott et al., 2009), by considering their

feedback and opinion. In this case, the information is conveyed from the customer to the company.

In a similar vein, public participation is characterized by the transfer of the flow from citizens to

public administrations. In the same way as for the measurement of brand engagement, the

evaluation of public participation is based on the level of interaction on the social media.

The measurement of awareness and engagement allows to identify the different ladders of public

engagement, namely public communication and participation (Figure 1)

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Figure 1: Dimensions of the model

4. Method

The definition of the social media measurement model consisted of an initial theoretical analysis

aimed at developing a preliminary model and an empirical application of the model to the Italian

context of local administrations. The theoretical development of the model has been achieved

through a literature review of extant studies on social media in governments and social media

measurement, which is presented in the first section of results. The application of the model instead

has been empirically conducted through a website analysis of social media pages of Italian

municipalities, given the extensive utilization of social instruments by Italian people. Recent studies

have classified Italians the fifth most active population in the world on social media (Nielsen,

2011). The reason behind the decision to investigate municipalities lies in the fact that “the most

important interactions between citizens and government happen at the local level” (Sandoval-

Almazan and Gil-Garcia, 2012: S72) and therefore this category of government agency can be

particularly fruitful to investigate public engagement.

The research was focused on 119 municipalities that are the capitals of, and give name to, the

Provinces. Among the wide array of social media tools, the analysis was concentrated on Facebook,

Twitter and YouTube, since they are the most well-known and used technologies in the Italian and

European context (Cosenza, 2012; Bonsòn et al., 2012).The research was longitudinal in nature,

performing the same analysis in 2012 and 2013 in order to analyze the evolution of social media

activity and citizens engagement over time. In both time frames, the approach of the analysis was

the same and consisted of two main phases. The first phase was aimed at preparing data to measure

Traditional dimensions of Public Engagement

Dimension of Public Engagement through social media

Public communication Public participation

Social media awarness Social media engagement

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the social media activity of local administrations. This phase entailed data collection, data

preparation and a preliminary data analysis.

The data collection required to register the presence of municipalities on Facebook, Twitter and

YouTube. This phase lasted three months and was followed by a data preparation step which had

the purpose of distinguishing between official and unofficial presences. Indeed, the search of the

municipality by means of the social media revealed the presence of several other accounts created

by communities of citizens or unknown users, which led us to differentiate between official and

unofficial pages. The preliminary data analysis allowed to build a picture on the social media

diffusion among Italian administrations, following official presences only.

The second phase aimed at specifically measuring the social media activity of each municipality,

through the application of the measures of awareness and engagement. As in the previous stage, the

first data collection step was followed by a second data analysis step. Data collection required the

gathering of information in order to evaluate the level of awareness and of engagement. Public

communication was evaluated measuring the level of awareness, while public participation was

judged on the basis of the measurement on the level of engagement. These dimensions were

operationalized for each social media, according to the framework proposed by Hoffman and Fodor

(2010).

Dimensions of

public

engagement

Measurement

dimensions Facebook Twitter YouTube

Public

communication Awareness

No. of “like”/no.

citizens

No. of followers/no.

of citizens

No. of channel view/no. of

citizens

Public

participation Engagement

No. of “talking

about”/no. of like

No. of “tweets”/no.

of citizens

No. of subscribers/no. of

citizens

Table 1: operationalization of the measures of awareness and engagement

The information collected for Facebook concerned the number of “likes” on a municipality fan

page1 and the number of “people talking about”. The total “likes” represents the number of

individuals who liked the municipality page, while “People talking about” indicates how many

people had actually talked about the municipality to their friends. This number includes all those

who liked the page, liked, commented on or shared a page post, answered a question, responded to

an event, mentioned the page or tagged the municipality in a photo (Facebook, 2011). The

information considered for Twitter pertained to the number of “followers” and the numbers of

1 A Facebook Fan page is a web page for businesses, organizations and brands to share their stories and connect with

people. Like timelines, Pages can be customized by adding apps, posting stories, hosting events and more. People who

like a certain Fan Page will receive updates in their News Feeds (source:

http://www.facebook.com/help?page=262355163822084 , 2012)

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“tweets”. “Tweets” are messages that are typed into the web box using 140 characters or less, while

“followers” are those people that subscribe to receive municipality updates. Finally, the number of

channel view for YouTube and the number of subscribers of the municipality channel were

collected. All these data were divided by the number of citizens of each municipality in order to

have comparable data between local administrations.

Data from each social media website were collected in the same month of two different years, May

2012 and May 2013 in order to analyze the trend of social media activity and public engagement

over time.

The second step of data analysis was related to the positioning of each municipality with respect to

the measures of awareness and engagement with respect to each social applications adopted. These

measures of awareness and engagement allowed the contribution of each social media to public

communication and public participation to be identified. Table 2 summarizes the steps and

operative activities of each of the two phases, while the next section provides details on the results

of this analysis.

Phases Steps Operative activities

Phase 1

Data collection

• 119 municipality webpages

• Facebook search

• Twitter search

• YouTube search

Data preparation • Distinction between official and unofficial presences

Data analysis • Descriptive statistics on social media diffusion

Phase 2

Data collection

• Data collection from Facebook pages

• Data collection from Twitter pages

• Data collection from YouTube pages

Data analysis • Evaluation of awareness

• Evaluation of engagement

Table 2: description of research phases

5. Results

Results are divided into two main sections. The first section presents the measurement model to

evaluate social media contribution to public engagement derived from literature analysis. The

second section shows the empirical application of this model on Italian municipalities that also

provide evidence on the level of social media diffusion in the Italian landscape.

5.1 Social media and public engagement: a measurement model

The first area of results is related to the discussion of the measurement model to evaluate social

media contribution to public engagement (Figure 2). The model consists of two main phases: a web

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site analysis of the institutional home page and a social media analysis aimed at collecting analytics

from social media that allows to define the value of awareness and engagement.

Figure 2: preliminary measurement model

The first phase consists of the analysis of the institutional website of the public administration with

the purpose to identify the existence of links to social media from the home page. The adoption of

social media is usually sponsored at the top of the institutional website home page (Snead, 2013).

The presence of a link to the social media directly on the home page of the institutional website is

usually a preliminary evidence of the care on social activity by the public administration, given that

at the bottom of web pages are usually included not important information (Nielsen and Loranger,

2006). However, a public administration can be found on social media even when there a no links

on the institutional page. This requires a distinction between official and unofficial pages. Slover-

Linett and Stoner (2011) and McAllister (2012), defined social media presence as official when

there is direct linkage to Facebook, Twitter or Youtube from the homepage of the municipality,

while the presence is defined unofficial when there are no linkages. Accordingly, official pages only

are to be considered in order to increase the reliability of data provided through social applications.

The second phase concerns the collection of analytics from the social media pages, that allow to

calculate the measures of awareness and engagement. Data that need to be collected vary according

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to the specific social media under analysis given the distinctive characteristics of each of them.

Following, social media analytics are discussed for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Facebook

Facebook is a general social networking site founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with the initial

purpose to stay in touch with his friends at Harvard University. It soon developed all over the world

becoming one of the most diffused social platform worldwide with 1 billion of users a month (Kiss,

2012). As a social network, it allows users to create a profile and connect with friends with similar

interests. This community favours interactions given the possibility to posts status or ideas and

comments to others’ posts.

Public communication is evaluated using the measure of awareness, that for Facebook is quantified

as the “number of like” with respect to the population of the municipality. The “like” on the

municipality page by a user implies to receive directly updates from the municipality on the

Facebook home page. Accordingly, the higher the “number of like”, the higher the users that

receive updates from the municipality. Public participation is evaluated using the measure of

engagement, that is quantified as the “number of talking about” with respect to the number of

people who like the municipality Facebook page. This number suggests the level of interactivity of

the social page given that it counts post, comments sharing of posts considering as a time horizon

the last seven days.

Twitter

Twitter is a social media that enters the category of micro-blogging sites. It has been defined as the

“greatest relational and communicative phenomenon that has developed on the Internet in recent

years” (Xifra and Grau, 2010: 171), that is continuously diffusing not only among private

companies, but also in the nonprofit sector (Waters and Jamal, 2011).

Twitter allows subscribers to post messages, called ‘Tweet’, in less than 140 characters and to

receive updates from profiles of interest becoming included in the following list. Accordingly, the

‘Followers’ of a profile are continuously updated on the ‘tweets’ published by the profile itself.

The measure of awareness for Twitter is quantified considering the ratio between the Followers and

the population. The higher the number of Followers of the municipality profile, the higher the

number of citizens that receive updates from the municipality. The measure of engagement is

calculated as the number of tweets with respect to the population. Tweets are considered as a proxy

of the level of interactivity of the municipality on this social media, which implies that an

increasing number of the measure of engagement corresponds to an higher number of tweets and

also of the interactivity of the social media page.

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YouTube

YouTube is a media-sharing platform that allows to share videos, serving over 100 million videos

per day (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). The distinctive feature of YouTube with respect to Facebook

and Twitter is that videos can be accessed also from non-subscribers, while comments are allowed

only to people registered to the platform. Municipalities have their own channel that is used to

upload videos, mainly about the administrative life. Channel view is the measured provided by

YouTube to count the number of visits received by the channel page, while subscribers represent

the number of people who registered to the channel of the municipality in order to be informed on

the new videos uploaded by the administration.

Awareness for YouTube is calculated as the number of channel views with respect to the population

as it represents a proxy on the level of diffusion of the social media page among citizens.

Engagement is calculated as the number of subscribers to the channel page with respect to the

population to indicate the interest by citizens, not only to watch the video, but also to comment the

video and directly receive updates.

5.2 Social media measurement model: application in Italian municipalities

The second area of result is related to the application of the proposed model to the Italian context of

municipalities, that provided two main findings: a snapshot of the social media diffusion in Italian

municipalities and the level of awareness and engagement associated with each social media.

The first finding is related to the social media diffusion in Italian local administrations (Table 3).

Web sites analysis showed that in 2013 as well as in 2012 the most diffused social media is

Facebook, followed by YouTube and Twitter. With a specific focus on 2013, Facebook is adopted

by the 45% (54/119) of the sample, YouTube by the 34% (41/119) of the sample while Twitter is

used by the 32% (38/119) of the administrations. This result further specified the picture provided

that Bensòn et al (2012) that identified Twitter as the most diffused social media in European

countries. However, the adoption of social media is heterogeneous among local administrations:

22% (26/119) of the administrations in the sample are active on all the three social applications,

14% (17/119) on two social media, while the 18% (21/119) of the administrations is adopting one

social media only. Even though the non-users represent the 46% of the administrations in the

sample, the trend is positive passing from 2012 to 2013, with an increasing number of

administrations that have started adopting Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The level of Facebook

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adoption has increased by 18%, followed by Twitter with an increase of 18% and YouTube, that has

registered 15% more municipalities with respect to 2012.

Facebook Twitter YouTube No social media

2012 26% 14% 19% 68%

2013 45% 32% 34% 46%

Table 3: level of social media diffusion

These data are specifically related to the official presences on social media, which means that the

link to the social media is provided in the home page of the institutional web site. Considering

unofficial presences, 92% of Italian municipalities result having a Facebook profile, 63% a Twitter

profile and 45% have a YouTube account. The difference between official and unofficial presences

is particularly relevant for Facebook and it provides evidence on the proliferation of public

administration profiles that are not formally recognized. The uncertainty about the reliability of

unofficial presences justifies the decision to focus only on official pages for the remaining analysis

(hereafter referred to as the social media without specifying ‘official’).

The second finding is related to the measurement of awareness and engagement per each social

media. Results show a different average level of awareness and engagement over time and between

social applications (see Table 4).

Facebook Twitter YouTube

Awareness Engagement Awareness Engagement Awareness Engagement

2012 3.03% 4.19% 1.23% 0.97% 70.52% 0.06%

2013 4.67% 3.66% 2.74% 2.29% 110.24% 0.11%

Delta + 1.64% - 0.54% +1.51% +1.33% +39.71% +0.05%

Table 4: average values of awareness and engagement

Considering average values of all the municipalities, it emerges that Facebook is characterized by a

level of awareness of 4.67%, Twitter has a value of 2.74%, while YouTube has a level of awareness

of 110.24%. These data signify that 4.67% of the citizens are aware of the presence of its

municipality on Facebook; 2.74% of them are aware of the presence on Twitter, while 110.24% of

the citizens are aware of the existence of an official YouTube account. These results suggest that

those local administrations that aims at communicating with citizens using the social media are

more willing to adopt YouTube than other social media.

The analysis of the average level of engagement has revealed that Facebook is the social media that

scored the highest value, followed by Twitter and YouTube. On average, of all the citizens that

‘like’ the municipality page, 4.19% of them are also active on the municipality Facebook page.

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Considering Twitter, the analysis has revealed that there is a level of engagement between the

municipalities and citizens that is 2.29%. Finally, with respect to YouTube, 0.11% of the citizens

are subscribers to the official municipal page on this social media. The analysis of these average

data suggests that Facebook is more willing to support engagement purposes.

Considering the trend of awareness and engagement between 2012 and 2013, it resulted that

awareness and engagement has improved in municipalities with the exception of the engagement

level of Facebook, that registered a decrease of 0.54% from one year to another.

Further insights can be obtained from to the analysis of the social media activity of each

municipality. Table 5 provides the details related to Facebook (data on Twitter and YouTube are in

the annex), where data on 2012 are compared with those of 2013. Some municipalities are

characterized by a high level of awareness and a low level of engagement or vice versa. This is the

case of Frosinone or Bologna and it suggests that local administrations can deliberatively decide

how to use social media, either to foster communication or participation. Some other municipalities

showed significant variations in both awareness and engagement from one year to another, either a

positive or a negative variation. For example, Belluno has decreased it level of engagement by 34%

from one year to another, while, on the contrary, some municipalities that did not use Facebook for

engaging purposes in 2012 (such as Imperia or Gorizia) has started using it with participation

purposes.

In summary, the general guidelines that derive from the analysis of data on social media in Italian

municipalities are the following: it is important to communicate citizens the official presence on

social media providing the link to the social media page directly on the home page of the

institutional web site; on average Facebook is suggested to support public participation while

YouTube is more willing to support public communication. Next section further enlarges the

general contribution of this study.

17

2012 2013 VARIATION

MUNICIPALITY FB AWAR FB ENG FB AWAR FB ENNG DELTA AWAR DELTA ENG

Belluno 0,26% 43,16% 4,05% 9,10% 3,79% -34,05%

Bologna 1,22% 9,33% 2,11% 9,85% 0,90% 0,53%

Cremona 0,35% 7,09% 0,78% 2,84% 0,43% -4,25%

Cuneo 1,26% 3,83% 3,21% 4,19% 1,95% 0,36%

Ferrara 5,55% 5,36% 7,91% 0,60% 2,36% -4,75%

Firenze 1,45% 9,20% 3,10% 2,76% 1,65% -6,44%

Forlì 2,55% 4,11% 3,07% 2,42% 0,52% -1,69%

Frosinone 6,16% 0,51% 9,23% 1,87% 3,07% 1,37%

Genova 1,88% 1,19% 2,31% 4,86% 0,42% 3,67%

Gorizia 5,85% 0,00% 11,24% 1,68% 5,39% 1,68%

Imperia 11,62% 0,00% 11,83% 9,64% 0,21% 9,64%

Lecce 0,24% 3,00% 0,88% 0,76% 0,64% -2,24%

Lodi 4,07% 1,16% 4,81% 5,07% 0,74% 3,91%

Lucca 5,49% 0,77% 6,54% 1,48% 1,05% 0,71%

Macerata 6,40% 1,78% 8,14% 3,51% 1,74% 1,73%

Milano 0,73% 1,33% 0,76% 4,59% 0,03% 3,26%

Modena 6,00% 3,74% 8,08% 8,76% 2,09% 5,03%

Monza 2,49% 3,66% 3,83% 1,56% 1,34% -2,10%

Napoli 0,44% 5,09% 0,74% 3,61% 0,30% -1,48%

Padova 0,70% 1,94% 1,14% 2,29% 0,44% 0,35%

Perugia 1,95% 4,86% 2,44% 1,21% 0,49% -3,65%

Pisa 1,22% 2,33% 1,92% 0,54% 0,71% -1,79%

Reggio Emilia 5,12% 1,71% 7,69% 4,05% 2,57% 2,34%

Rimini 5,02% 1,69% 8,22% 7,87% 3,20% 6,18%

Torino 2,28% 1,47% 2,90% 1,82% 0,62% 0,34%

Udine 1,53% 2,75% 2,08% 3,11% 0,55% 0,36%

Varese 3,76% 0,00% 6,25% 0,22% 2,49% 0,22%

Venezia 1,93% 0,61% 2,96% 2,06% 1,03% 1,45%

Verbania 0,28% 2,27% 2,72% 5,70% 2,44% 3,42%

Vicenza 2,02% 5,13% 9,28% 1,63% 7,26% -3,50%

AVERAGE 3,03% 4,19% 4,67% 3,66% 1,64% -0,54%

Table 5: awareness and engagement for Italian municipalities on Facebook

Discussion and Conclusion

This research aimed at developing a model to evaluate social media contribution to public

engagement, followed by a specific application in Italian municipalities.

The empirical application of the model, and more specifically the calculation of the measures of

engagement and awareness, gave the possibility to refine the initial model adding a last phase: the

positioning of the administration in a four by four matrix, called social media evaluation matrix, in

order to directly analyze the contribution of the social media activity to public communication and

public participation.

The matrix (Figure 3) is defined starting from the evaluation of awareness and engagement on a

sample of observations. On the horizontal axe the level of awareness is represented, while the

18

vertical dimension include the level of engagement. Positioning the axes in the average values of

the observations (i.e. average value of awareness and engagement considering all the municipalities

adopting that specific social media), four quadrants can be identified corresponding to different

levels of social media activities and therefore different contributions to public engagement: ghost,

chatterbox, engagers and stars. Figure 3 represents the model applied to the Facebook analysis in

Italian municipalities.

Figure 3: social media evaluation matrix

Ghost is the bottom-left quadrant that includes municipalities characterized by a low level of

awareness and engagement. This means that a few people know the social media page of the

municipality, as underlined by the measure of awareness, and a few people talk about it, visible

from the engagement measure. This position underlines a current limited activity on the social

media, albeit the registered official presence of the municipality on this social application, and a

very low interactivity on the social page. This can be the situation of administrations that registered

to the social media because of fashion reasons, but then are not interested or unable to use and

communicate through this channel. Administrations in this bottom-left area of the matrix, should

ask themselves: is it relevant to stay social? If the answer is yes, then a substantial revision of the

social media activity is required to increase the interactions with citizens. If the answer is no, then it

is better to abandon the social media application.

19

Chatterbox is the bottom-right quadrant of the matrix characterized by municipalities with a high

level of awareness and a low level of engagement. This means that a lot of people know about the

social page and like it, therefore receiving updates from the municipality, but the level of

interactivity of the social page is low. Accordingly, the current social activity favours public

communication, but not public participation given the low score on the dimension of engagement.

This is a signal the current social media activity can be improved because the public administration

is able to disseminate information, but not to involve and interact with citizens. A potential

approach to improve interactions through social media can be the change of the content of the

communication or the language trough which contents are communicated in order to stimulate

dialogue and discussions.

Engagers is the upper-left side of the matrix and it includes municipalities with a high level of

awareness but a low level of engagement. This means that the local administration is able to

intensively interact with citizens using social media, but interactions are limited to a small portion

of citizens because a few people know about the social page, as highlighted by the measurement of

awareness. Administrations in this area should understand if this position is the result of a

deliberative choice to intensively talk with a few people or not. If the answer is yes, then the public

administration can maintain this level of activity, otherwise it is necessary to increase the exposure

of the social media page.

Star is the upper-right side of the matrix and it includes municipalities with both high level of

awareness and engagement, which means that a lot of people know about the social media page and

they are also intensively interacting with the municipality. This is the best situation because it

provides evidence that the current social media activity is successful in both supporting public

communication and public participation.

The social media evaluation matrix is useful to evaluate the current ability of administrations to

share information and interact with citizens, but it also allows to monitor the evolution of the social

media contribution to public engagement overtime. Each individual administration can position

itself and compare its position with respect to other municipalities and repeat this activity overtime

in order to understand how its measures of awareness and engagement have varied overtime. The

decision to position axes in the average value of the observations is justified by the need to identify

a reference value to distinguish between high and low level of awareness and engagement; a

comparable benchmark value has been found in the average value of administrations in the sample

in order to provide a feasible target.

This practical application of the model to the Italian contest provides also contributions at the

academic level. The first contribution of this study refers to the adoption of the awareness and

20

engagement measures to evaluate the social media activity of local administrations. Potentialities

and benefits of social media have been widely claimed and studies on social media use in

governments has increasing (e.g. Bertot et al., 2012; Snead, 2013); however, the issue of the

evaluation of the social media activity is mainly neglected albeit widely recognized that social

media do not automatically translate into citizens engagement (Kamal, 2009; OECD, 2009;

Panagiotopoulos et al., 2011). This study suggests to adopt the measures of awareness and

engagement in order to evaluate the social media activity, whose specific metric varies depending

on the specific type of social media. These measures are, in turn, linked to public engagement:

awareness provides information on the ability to share information with citizens, while engagement

quantifies the level of interactions with citizens through the social page. These measures enlarges

current literature on social media use, proposing specific measures to evaluate social media

activities. Furthermore, suggestions are provided in terms of how Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

differently support awareness and engagement: Facebook has resulted favouring engagement and

therefore public participation, while YouTube has emerged particularly suitable for public

communication given the high level of awareness.

The second contribution of this study relates to the social media evaluation matrix, that defines a

measurement model to evaluate how social media support public engagement, distinguishing

between public communication and public participation. Advantages of this matrix are related to the

possibility of positioning local administrations with respect to other administrations and overtime.

First of all, the adoption of public available information to evaluate the axes of awareness and

engagement allows each administration to select which other administrations to include in the

comparison. This means that an Italian municipality, for example, can decide to evaluate itself with

respect to municipalities in other countries or with different type of governmental bodies. Second,

the possibility to repeat this measurement overtime allows to understand the effects of social media

activities adopted by the administration on awareness and engagement. Albeit the flexibility of the

measurement model, the main limitation of the matrix is related to the operationalization of the

measures of awareness and engagement. They are based on public available statistics provided by

the social media and therefore dependent on the time window of the analysis. Further research

should develop more stable measurement for these two variables that are less dependent on the

moment in which the analysis is performed.

Finally, this study enlarges the picture of social media adoption in public administrations (e.g.

Bonsòn et al., 2012) with the specific snapshot of the Italian municipality landscape.

In summary, this study provides a first attempt to move forward the discussion on the type of social

media adopted, introducing the evaluation of the social media activity and its contribution to public

21

engagement. This model opens up further research on the measurement and evaluation of social

media activity by public administration, that represent a relevant issue given the importance for

public administration to plan a social media strategy (OECD, 2009). At the practitioner level, this

study provides a practical instruments social media managers can adopt to assess the level of

awareness and engagement of social media and the relative position with respect to other similar

administration.

22

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28

Annex 1

List of municipalities in the sample

Region Area Municipality Population

Emilia Romagna north Bologna 382,473

Emilia Romagna north Ferrara 135,476

Emilia Romagna north Forlì 118,312

Emilia Romagna north Cesena 97,204

Emilia Romagna north Modena 184,822

Emilia Romagna north Parma 187,310

Emilia Romagna north Piacenza 103,399

Emilia Romagna north Ravenna 159,390

Emilia Romagna north Reggio Emilia 170,420

Emilia Romagna north Rimini 143,793

Friuli Venezia Giulia north Gorizia 35,765

Friuli Venezia Giulia north Pordenone 51,789

Friuli Venezia Giulia north Trieste 205,557

Friuli Venezia Giulia north Udine 99,756

Liguria north Genova 609,004

Liguria north Imperia 42,761

Liguria north La Spezia 95,341

Liguria north Savona 62,456

Lombardy north Bergamo 119,712

Lombardy north Brescia 194,283

Lombardy north Como 85,694

Lombardy north Cremona 71,995

Lombardy north Lecco 48,230

Lombardy north Lodi 44,453

Lombardy north Mantova 48,838

Lombardy north Milan 1,331,807

Lombardy north Monza 122,773

Lombardy north Pavia 71,189

Lombardy north Sondrio 22,334

Lombardy north Varese 81,751

Piedmont north Alessandria 95,009

Piedmont north Asti 76,719

Piedmont north Biella 45,660

Piedmont north Cuneo 55,783

Piedmont north Novara 105,078

Piedmont north Turin 909,179

Piedmont north Verbania 31,288

Piedmont north Vercelli 47,146

Trentino Alto Adige north Bolzano 104,278

Trentino Alto Adige north Trento 116,622

Veneto north Belluno 36,595

Veneto north Padua 214,601

Veneto north Rovigo 53,111

29

Region Area Municipality Population Veneto north Treviso 83,163

Veneto north Venice 270,957

Veneto north Verona 264,545

Veneto north Vicenza 115,795

The Aosta Valley north Aosta 35,008

Latium center Frosinone 48,030

Latium center Latina 119,895

Latium center Rieti 47,996

Latium center Rome 2,768,415

Latium center Viterbo 63,899

Marche center Ancona 103,101

Marche center Ascoli Piceno 50,939

Marche center Fermo 37,994

Marche center Macerata 43,079

Marche center Pesaro 94,898

Marche center Urbino 15,636

Tuscany center Arezzo 100,455

Tuscany center Florence 372,168

Tuscany center Grosseto 82,230

Tuscany center Livorno 161,191

Tuscany center Lucca 85,249

Tuscany center Massa 70,973

Tuscany center Carrara 64,441

Tuscany center Pisa 88,069

Tuscany center Pistoia 90,286

Tuscany center Prato 188,591

Tuscany center Siena 54,664

Umbria center Perugia 169,108

Umbria center Terni 113,270

Umbria center Chieti 53,748

Umbria center L'Aquila 72,454

Umbria center Pescara 122,872

Umbria center Teramo 54,970

Basilicata south Matera 60,916

Basilicata south Potenza 68,312

Calabria south Catanzaro 93,167

Calabria south Cosenza 70,016

Calabria south Crotone 61,863

Calabria south Reggio Calabria 186,436

Calabria south Vibo Valentia 33,887

Campania south Avellino 56,135

Campania south Benevento 61,738

Campania south Caserta 78,680

Campania south Naples 959,279

Campania south Salerno 139,036

Molise south Campobasso 50,881

Molise south Isernia 22,149

Apulia south Bari 320,146

Puglia south Barletta 94,561

30

Region Area Municipality Population Apulia south Andria 100,217

Apulia south Trani 53,950

Apulia south Brindisi 89,843

Apulia south Foggia 152,557

Apulia south Lecce 95,677

Apulia south Taranto 191,370

Sardinia south Cagliari 156,259

Sardinia south Carbonia 29,784

Sardinia south Iglesias 27,438

Sardinia south Nuoro 36,277

Sardinia south Olbia 56,363

Sardinia south Tempio Pausania 14,255

Sardinia south Oristano 31,963

Sardinia south Sanluri 8,527

Sardinia south Villacidro 14,446

Sardinia south Sassari 130,644

Sardinia south Lanusei 5,660

Sardinia south Tortolì 10,888

Sicily south Agrigento 59,174

Sicily south Caltanissetta 60,283

Sicily south Catania 292,743

Sicily south Enna 27,895

Sicily south Messina 242,122

Sicily south Palermo 655,614

Sicily south Ragusa 73,734

Sicily south Siracusa 123,464

Sicily south Trapani 70,662

31

Annex 2

Detailed data on Twitter

2012 2013 DELTA

MUNICIPALITY TW AW TW EN TW AW TW EN DELTA AW DELTA ENG

Belluno 0,71% 0,43% 2,79% 3,18% 2,07% 2,76%

Bologna 0,99% 3,81% 2,32% 6,93% 1,33% 3,11%

Cuneo 0,69% 0,80% 1,91% 1,92% 1,22% 1,12%

Firenze 1,34% 0,81% 4,14% 2,32% 2,80% 1,50%

Genova 0,70% 1,15% 1,16% 1,33% 0,46% 0,18%

Lodi 1,62% 1,66% 3,16% 2,85% 1,54% 1,18%

Matera 1,02% 1,19% 2,51% 2,25% 1,49% 1,06%

Milano 0,37% 0,17% 1,11% 0,23% 0,73% 0,07%

Modena 1,31% 0,85% 2,97% 2,80% 1,67% 1,94%

Napoli 1,01% 0,27% 1,97% 0,34% 0,96% 0,07%

Pistoia 1,11% 1,30% 2,69% 4,11% 1,57% 2,81%

Reggio Emilia 0,54% 0,10% 1,74% 1,16% 1,20% 1,05%

Rimini 1,71% 0,54% 3,40% 1,49% 1,70% 0,95%

Roma 0,05% 0,03% 0,60% 0,41% 0,54% 0,38%

Torino 4,57% 0,75% 7,86% 1,00% 3,29% 0,25%

Udine 1,93% 0,51% 3,63% 3,16% 1,69% 2,65%

Venezia 1,25% 2,04% 2,58% 3,53% 1,32% 1,49%

AVERAGE 1,23% 0,97% 2,74% 2,29% 1,51% 1,33%

32

Detailed data on YouTube

2012 2013 DELTA

MUNICIPALITY YT AW YT EN YT AW YT EN DELTA AW DELTA ENG

Belluno 2,12% 0,03% 17,20% 0,14% 15,07% 0,11%

Bologna 12,73% 0,02% 16,27% 0,04% 3,54% 0,02%

Bolzano 0,90% 0,00% 9,69% 0,02% 8,79% 0,02%

Cremona 3,03% 0,02% 15,78% 0,04% 12,75% 0,02%

Cuneo 56,93% 0,05% 79,75% 0,09% 22,82% 0,04%

Firenze 1,05% 0,01% 3,80% 0,02% 2,75% 0,02%

Forlì 17,27% 0,02% 29,94% 0,05% 12,67% 0,03%

Genova 470,19% 0,26% 623,90% 0,35% 153,71% 0,08%

Lodi 528,87% 0,33% 884,20% 0,70% 355,33% 0,37%

Milano 0,07% 0,00% 0,10% 0,00% 0,03% 0,00%

Modena 54,07% 0,08% 90,00% 0,16% 35,93% 0,08%

Monza 1,43% 0,01% 10,69% 0,03% 9,26% 0,03%

Napoli 49,10% 0,06% 93,21% 0,12% 44,11% 0,07%

Pavia 172,69% 0,10% 300,00% 0,19% 127,31% 0,09%

Perugia 7,28% 0,01% 16,12% 0,03% 8,84% 0,02%

Pisa 12,52% 0,04% 15,08% 0,05% 2,56% 0,01%

Pistoia 0,40% 0,00% 3,47% 0,01% 3,06% 0,01%

Ravenna 5,20% 0,02% 7,47% 0,02% 2,27% 0,01%

Reggio Emilia 71,39% 0,06% 108,39% 0,11% 37,00% 0,05%

Rimini 2,50% 0,00% 15,98% 0,03% 13,48% 0,03%

Torino 66,16% 0,09% 82,59% 0,11% 16,43% 0,03%

Trieste 20,26% 0,07% 28,52% 0,09% 8,26% 0,02%

Udine 65,86% 0,06% 83,31% 0,09% 17,45% 0,03%

MEDIA 70,52% 0,06% 110,24% 0,11% 39,71% 0,05%