Chapter 25
Designing Social Media Strategies and Policies
Ines Mergel
Social media adoption in the public sector evolved from early attempts to digitize internal processes, service delivery to citizens, and now online interactions with citizens (Bretschneider & Mergel, 2010). As part of the 2012 Digital Government Strategy, the US federal government is shifting from the one-directional e-government paradigm from Internet presence (representation, interactions, and transactions) toward online customer service using a wide range of interactive, bidirectional social media applications (White House, 2012). The goal is to reach higher levels of citizen engagement.
Researchers and technology enthusiasts are proposing that social media will radically alter the communication and interaction patterns between government and its constituents. This technology-deterministic view describes social media use as a transformative experience that helps to support democratization efforts by allowing higher degrees of participation and engagement by otherwise disengaged citizens. Proponents of this view focus on political campaigns, such as the 2008 US presidential election and the Arab Spring movement, which were both supported by social media use to engage, organize, and activate otherwise disconnected audiences (Howard & Parks, 2012; Talbot, 2008). These so-called social media revolutions, however, have lacked truly transformative outcomes. Although they helped citizens to coordinate and share information, responses from formal government organizations have often led to opposite effects: centralized control of the message and increased rules and regulations to streamline and align social media interactions with the existing communication strategy (Gladwell & Shirky, 2011; Shirky, 2011). Political crises, such as the Arab Spring movement in Egypt and the shutdown of the microblogging service Twitter in Turkey, have shown that political elites and citizens are using social media for opinion building and news manipulation. In turn, Western democracies have used Twitter and videos posted on YouTube, for example, for public diplomacy purposes to support international democratization efforts.
Transferring the lessons learned from successful political online campaigns into day-to-day governance activities of public sector organizations poses challenges. Political campaigns use many targeted efforts to engage and mobilize voters. These social media campaigns are time-bound, highly individualized political efforts that end with the election of one candidate. Campaign tactics are comparable to marketing efforts and are focused on discrediting the opponent and highlighting the advantages of one party's candidate. These online tactics contradict the expectations of public sector organizations to inform and educate the public in a neutral, trustworthy voice. Government agencies use plain language, without raising the suspicion of manipulating the public or alienating populations that might not agree with political leadership.
Much of the move into social media is based on increased citizen expectations for a responsive government. In 2014, 70 percent of all online adults in the United States use social media and are expecting their government officials to respond to their concerns through the channels they receive other types of news and information (Pew Research Internet Project, 2014).
The traditional way of government communication follows a need-to-know paradigm (Dawes, Cresswell, & Pardo, 2009): the existing frequency and content of information sharing with the public is limited and regulated by laws or political mandates. The result is that updates on an e-government website occur based on the availability of new information, such as a new policy or rule. A need-to-know paradigm contemplates a process where information is shared infrequently—largely when there is information to share or when the law obligates government—or when information is shared in well-formulated press releases. Internally, several editing and revision steps precede the publication and include content experts, legal counsel, and top managers before the final document is released.
Traditional information sharing and communication with stakeholders is designed to efficiently and effectively inform the public or follow political regulations that bind government organizations to inform the public (Weber, 1968). Communication is centralized in the public affairs or communication departments with the authority to create outward-bound communication channels, but they leave the creation of the content to experts inside the organization. As a result, professional content experts are not involved in the communication task; instead it is handed over to communication professionals in order to avoid misinformation, reduce the risk of overcommunication, and support the protection of sensitive information.
Decentralizing communication tasks increases the risk of spreading rumors, leaking protected information, or not speaking in one voice on behalf of the organization. Controlling the message ensures accountability and trust in the steady information and communication paradigm in the public sector, an effect that was lost when the General Services Administration (GSA) conference spending scandal broke in the news and GSA employees took to social media, creating social media gaffes for their own organization (Shahid, 2012). It is not surprising that most e-government sites are limiting the communication channels stakeholders can use to communicate with a government organization. Often contact forms or general e-mail addresses are available, but are considered black boxes, without the ability to trace the status of the contact request or responses.
This Weberian model of controlled information creation and release was challenged especially in the US federal government when social media were introduced and agencies started in a highly decentralized fashion to break centralized information sharing (Weber, 1947). Citizens who are following government organizations on an online social networking site are no longer bound to e-mail forms on an e-government site. Instead, online requests posted on a social media site are publicly observable for other citizens and journalists.
Encouraged by President Obama's Transparency and Open Government memo, which directed agencies to harness new technologies to increase participation, transparency, and collaboration, government agencies created many social media accounts (Obama, 2009). Initial experiments with these innovative channels occurred outside existing technology policy and were retroactively integrated as part of the official public affairs communication tool box (Mergel, 2011b). Mergel and Bretschneider (2013) show, using the example of the US Army's iterations of its social media handbook, that with every major technological advancement (from social networking sites to geo-tagged location-based services and on to mobile phone applications), the army adapts its communication strategy and online tactics to the behavioral and technological changes and incorporates bureaucratic norms and sanctions into its technology acceptance and communication strategy documents. This example shows that public sector organizations face two challenges in this most recent e-government phase. First, they have very little authority over technological improvements, which are driven by third-party technology providers such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Second, citizens' behavior online is changing with their own preferences, increased digital literacy, or as a response to technological changes. Often this means that government organizations have to follow these two external changes and adapt their internal practices, a circumstance that is visible in social media handbook updates and adjustments.
Given the external volatility of both technological developments and citizen expectations and the need for increased direct interactions, government agencies are responding by introducing bureaucratic norms and regulations for the use of social media applications. First, they are designing social media strategies that align social media use with the organizational communication strategy and the overall mission of the agency. Second, they govern online exchanges with citizens in social media policies.
This chapter addresses the evolution and distinction of social media tools used in the public sector, the need for a comprehensive mission-oriented social media strategy and accompanying policies to direct employee and citizen behavior, the use of different online tactics to support the phases of the policy cycle, and managerial challenges for the institutionalization of new technologies.
Distinguishing Types of Social Media Tools
Social media applications, which are hosted by third parties outside government's technological infrastructure, need to be distinguished from traditional e-government services that for the most part are under the direct control of an agency, designed to process a task online (such as e-tax filing). Social media represent new forms of communication and information channels for government organizations (Li & Feeney, 2014) to increase trust through public awareness and transparency.
Studies have shown that more than 90 percent of state and local government organizations in the United States are using at least one social media tool (Hansen-Flaschen & Parker, 2012). Following an executive order, all departments in the executive branch of the US federal government also increased the interactivity of their websites by adding social media tools (Mergel, 2012c). Every member of Congress is available on Twitter and Facebook (Congressional Management Foundation, 2012; Mergel, 2012a). On all levels of government, social media are used for a wide variety of purposes, and although all of these levels use Facebook and Twitter to connect to their constituents, the managerial tasks of creating content, distributing it, and curating responses, as well as the general purpose, vary across government.
Generally scholars divide social media tools into social networking, content creation, content curation, gamification, and, most recently, open innovation sites. Boyd and Ellison (2007) mainly distinguish social networking sites that allow users to create online profiles, establish online connections to their contacts, and share information with each other. Public sector organizations use social networking sites not to “friend” citizens, but to ask them to follow their updates to inform and educate the public. Social networking sites include Facebook, Twitter, and GovLoop (a network for public sector employees to share knowledge).
In the second category are content-creation sites used to create or upload native content and then use social networking sites as distribution mechanisms to share the content. This category includes video-sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo and sites to upload pictures such as Flickr, Instagram, and the visual bookmarking site Pinterest. To compile news stories that users share across social media sites, government organizations are using content curation tools to pull together stories on Storify, Tumblr, or their own blogs and RSS feeds. In addition, government agencies use gamification sites that allow citizens to collect points or build online architectures, such as SecondLife and FourSquare, to incentivize their increased engagement with government content. Most recently, open innovation sites are helping government agencies develop crowdsourcing solutions for public management problems from professional and citizen problem solvers (Mergel, Bretschneider, Louis, & Smith, 2014). These sites include the contest and prizes site Challenge.gov, but also citizen participation tools such as Petitions.gov and Regulations.gov, which encourage citizens to actively collaborate with government on new policies or gain support for political actions in form of petitions. Other crowdsourcing sites include citizen-reporting tools such as SeeClickFix.com, which allows citizens to collectively inform government agencies about 311 nonemergency issues, such as parking, waste removal, or potholes (for an overview of citizen engagement modes and corresponding online platforms, see Nabatchi & Mergel, 2010).
Current Social Media Practices in the Public Sector
The most popular social media sites are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and, to a lesser extent, blogs, wikis, and newer platforms for citizen engagement. Their use has become acceptable mostly based on the early successes of political candidates' engaging citizens in political processes such as recruiting volunteers for campaigns, targeting undecided voters and activism that allowed candidates to change behavior, moving nonvoters to become voters, engaging new voters early, and ultimately shaping the election of a candidate (Bond et al., 2012). However, social media interactions in day-to-day governance activities are not used to promote a single candidate; instead, they support connections citizens have made offline and replicate these relationships online and news dissemination to sites that citizens are frequently visiting for their personal updates.
Research has shown that government agencies use social media to influence external stakeholders by disseminating policies (Maultasch, Oliviera, & Welch, 2013) or to raise awareness for new policies and government operations in general and to fulfill information mandates (Moon, 2002). Researchers have also shown that increased interactivity between citizens and government organizations has the potential to increase transparency and accountability (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010, 2012; Mossberger, Wu, & Crawford, 2013). The perceived power distance between government officials and their stakeholders might be reduced and citizens are more likely to engage in future decision-making processes.
International examples show a wide variety of the purposeful use of social media by government agencies. For example, the Korean government aims to use social media platforms to establish new policies, settle conflicts, and resolve issues online (Yi, Oh, & Kim, 2013). The Chinese government has adopted the microblogging service Weibo to disclose government information and allow agencies to directly inform the public about newest developments (Zheng, 2013). The most effective use so far that extends the information-sharing capabilities of an agency beyond the traditional e-government website is the use of social media during emergency situations. Online warning in preparation for a disaster through social networking sites is an effective means for moving information into channels that citizens use to vet and share their risk perceptions with their friends and family members (Chatfielda, Scholl, & Brajawidagdac, 2013; Kavenaugh et al., 2011).
Nevertheless, most practices remain in the early phases of e-government implementation. Government organizations use social media tools mostly as additional channels for pushing information out to the public or to recycle content already disseminated through the organization's website or other communication channels. This approach misses many opportunities to create an interactive democracy and reduces the potential for a transformative and responsive government.
Recent studies have shown that social media can have direct impacts on citizens by increasing social awareness during emergency situations, preparing citizens for disaster effects, and directing them to resources to help them in the aftermath of an emergency to avoid communication gaps reported during previous disasters (Comfort, 2007). Social media communication networks can then lead to more resilient communities that can rely on trusted channels and access to government information even when utilities and communication channels such as landlines or websites are no longer available.
Social media channels and or other types of one-to-many and many-to-many mass communication tools can have a direct impact on the quality of decision making. By including citizen opinions in early phases of the policy process, the nature of the decision-making process is changing (Ferro, Loukis, Charalabidis, & Osella, 2013). Citizens who are participating in discussions about early drafts of a policy are more likely to have a favorable view of the final policy. Through online tools, more voices can be included in the policymaking process and potentially influence the decisions a government organization is making. In this process, trust in government decision making is strengthened, satisfaction with final decisions (or policies) is increased, and the burden on government to deal with recourses is lowered.
Most government agencies are still experimenting with the use of social media. As an example, the US Government Accountability Office (2011a 2011b) instructed all federal departments to create a social media strategy and policy to focus their online activities on core mission support .
Designing a Social Media Strategy and Policy
Government agencies need to redesign their organizational processes and realign innovative online practices, citizen preferences, and external technological changes and with their own internal communication processes.
The main challenge in their using social media is to continuously align their preferences and adoption behavior with technological changes initiated by third-party technology providers and cultural changes of citizens' online behavior. It is therefore necessary to formalize communication behavior using a formal social media strategy and also direct citizen behavior by publishing a social media policy that helps citizens understand the rules of online engagement with a government entity (Mergel, 2013a).
Initially government agencies relied on the directions for Internet use outlined in the E-Government Act of 2002 (White House, 2003). This act, however, written before social media applications entered the market, covered only e-government websites (owned and operated by government) and information communication technologies such as e-mail. With the advent of social media, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified the challenges agencies were facing that were not covered by the 2002 act (Bertot, Jaeger, & Hansen, 2012; Government Accountability Office, 2011a), and additional guidance was necessary to help government organizations understand the use of third-party websites and applications (White House, 2010), including secure use of social media and how to manage social media records (National Archives and Record Administration, 2010; Sunstein, 2010).
Ultimately GAO (2011b) directed the departments of the executive branch to design social media strategies and policies to reduce the risks associated with online interactions outside the accepted information communication and technology paradigm in the federal government (2011b). The GSA was directed to help formalize the acquisition of social media tools and institutionalize online social interactions. It is the official social media registry for all third-party social media accounts created on behalf of an agency, an official URL shortener that indicates government updates and helps to avoid clicks on and dissemination of spam, and adjusted federal social media terms of service agreements negotiated with social media providers (GSA, 2012). Internally, however, agencies went through different phases of social media adoption: moving from bottom-up experimentation with no guidance to highly risk-averse, formal, controlled communication behavior that aligned with the acceptable-use strategies of other government technologies (Mergel, 2010 2013b).
Social Media Strategy
A social media strategy lines up interactions on social networking sites with a government agency's overall information and communication strategy. The main driver of a social media strategy is strategic alignment with the organization's mission. First, a needs assessment outlines the gap between the organization's needs to communicate and the stakeholders' requirements for interactions (Mergel, 2012b). Based on the strategic goals, operational goals are derived and necessary changes in the internal communication processes, responsibilities, and roles are examined. This includes decisions about who should be responsible for social media activities in the organization, what tools to use, and how to post updates.
In a highly centralized organization, social media are seen as a technology issue, and the chief information officer is responsible for the strategic and managerial issues that are arising. In decentralized organizations, social media are the responsibility of public affairs or communication officers; these organizations also allow decentralized social media accounts across different content areas, teams, or temporary campaigns.
Next, external issues have to be resolved: where an agency's stakeholders are congregating and listening to news and how the organization can design processes to identify public management problems that can be solved using social media. Public management problems can include the need for increased public awareness, transparency, collaboration, or participation, and potential solutions on how to solve these issues with the help of social media interactions are researched. Finally, those responsible for designing social media interactions have to seek consensus and support from top management for their planned activities.
Depending on the phases or maturity levels of e-government, social media applications are mostly used for publishing or recycling otherwise already existing content from the agency's website. First-order priorities include closing the gap between representation, simple information sharing, and educating the public to responsive and potentially transformative government. Higher-order considerations go beyond a representative approach and include activities such as increasing transparency by sharing government data and encouraging collaboration through citizens' reuse of the data by collaborative building mobile phone applications.
Second- and third-order social media activities are then aligned with these priorities and result in instructions on how to design online tactics that will help the organization reach the first-order priorities. Consider the example of the US Geological Service's (2014) mission: “The USGS is a science organization that provides impartial information on the health of our ecosystems and environment, the natural hazards that threaten us, the natural resources we rely on, the impacts of climate and land-use change, and the core science systems that help us provide timely, relevant, and useable information.” Its first priority is to provide objective information to the public, clearly an information-sharing and potentially educational priority. In addition, it uses social media to seek input from citizens who provide short updates on the microblogging service Twitter to post the individually felt impact of an earthquake. USGS (2013) takes this nonscientific information and geo-tags the updates on the Internet Intensity Map titled “Did you feel it?”
Online Tactics
Online tactics are a direct result of the strategic considerations planned and manifested in social media strategy. Online interactions include the actual online activities that are observable on each of the agency's social media channels (e.g., vertical and horizontal communication elements and variations in the frequency and type of interaction an agency has planned). The first-order priorities of a government agency result in four online tactics: (1) pushing information out through social media without responding to requests from followers, (2) actively pulling in citizens by asking them to solve public management problems (e.g., sending their own pictures or comments), (3) providing individual customer service and responding to individual concerns, and (4) networking with citizens and collaborating with stakeholders to improve government services or solve public management problems through open innovation approaches.
Traditional phases of e-government implementation focus on the presence or representation of online content, interactions (through forms, e-mails, one-way submissions) and first attempts of online transactions. Most e-government efforts have realized stages 1 and 2, while social media efforts are realized across all for stages. Table 25.1 compares e-government tactics with social media tactics.
Table 25.1 Comparing E-Government Phases with Social Media Tactics
| E-Government Model | Social Media Tactics |
| One-way interaction (making forms available online) | Push tactic: Representation |
| Two-way interaction (contact opportunities with response and tracking) | Pull tactic (bidirectional) |
| Full online transaction, including delivery and payment (e.g., accept water/tax bill payments, renewal of permits, newsletters) | Individual customer service |
| Responsive and transformative e-government (e.g., changes in citizen satisfaction, online dialogues) | Networking (listening into the network) |
Source: Adapted from Mergel (2010 2013b).
A fully implemented social media plan should also include online measurement techniques to provide information to the implementers in order to assess whether social media efforts are successful and are reaching and engaging the target audiences. This feedback can then be used to adjust online tactics (Mergel, 2013b). Investments in social media practices might not immediately increase the effectiveness and efficiency of government communication, but as more investments in human resources and professionalization efforts are made, social media managers will have to show the performance of their efforts. Agency-specific key performance indicators are developed in collaboration with the GSA's social media team that are measuring outcomes that might hint at increased effectiveness and efficiency of social media interactions (Bekkers, Edwards, & Kool, 2013; Mergel, 2013b 2014).
Social Media Policies
Policies that help an agency to direct both employee and citizen behavior (Mergel, 2011a) are the final element of a successful social media strategy. These policies include directions for citizens and justify government action in situations when citizens violate the rules by using foul language, posting off-topic comments to a government-run social media site, or engaging in other inappropriate online behavior. Agencies frequently display their communication rules that are directing appropriate citizen behavior on the social media site (e.g., in the account description) or are reposting it in their newsfeeds to gain citizen attention.
Helping government employees understand the risks and consequences of their private use of social media can be commonly observed by defense agencies that aim to direct those in the military not to use geotagging of their social media updates to protect national security interests. Members of the executive office of the president are even instructed to put their personal social media accounts on hold while they serve the administration.
Social media policies frequently include information for employees who are handling the social media accounts on behalf of the organization. The policies state in detail what type of content is allowable, how often the agency is allowed to post, and how government employees are allowed to respond to citizen requests. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows an example of how the appropriate use of social media responses can be designed for other agencies. With every social media request EPA receives, responses are vetted internally, and the effort to respond has to be weighed against the general usefulness of the information for a larger audience beyond the individual requester (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2010). In addition, EPA is frequently reposting its external social media policy to its social media channels and alerts citizens in what cases they respond or even delete citizen comments.
Managerial Challenges for Implementing Social Media in the Public Sector
Every wave of new technology adoption in the public sector has been labeled groundbreaking or disrupting. The assumption is that the mere existence of a new technology will revolutionize the processing of information, making government more effective and efficient. E-government activities—so far mostly the web presence of government agencies—raised the hope of revolutionizing interactions between government and citizens. In fact, very few interactions or transactions can be conducted online. The lone success is online tax filing through the Department of Revenues website. Most e-government practices are still failing to provide effective citizen interactions or fully functional online transactions that replace the existing face-to-face services, and 70 percent of large-scale information technology projects in the public sector are still failing. The most recent example is the failure to implement the online marketplace HealthCare.gov. While technological issues can be overcome with additional investments in the advancement and improvement of the technology, social media development risks are outsourced and reside with web development companies.
The main challenge for government agencies remains the appropriate management of citizen expectations and adjusting internal processes and content strategies to respond appropriately to increased expectations for responsiveness. Often, however, the social affordances of interactive social media online conversations among stakeholders are contradicting government operations and communication preferences by not allowing government to enter interactive online discussions with citizens. As a result, traditional e-government activities and social media communication channels are offered in parallel, adding to the workload of an agency but not necessarily replacing efforts. Many online interactions are designed to pull citizens into the e-government website and download material or find other information to get in touch with the agency offline.
Government's cost of adoption is increasing due to the rapidly changing nature of the medium and changes in online citizen behavior. Training top management to understand the value proposition of online interactions with citizens has become a priority for the successful adoption of social media. Decreasing digital literacy and understanding new dimensions of technological access, including convenience, speed, and information equality and equity issues, are moving to the forefront of social media use in government.
A direct link to increased effectiveness and efficiency is difficult to measure. Initial investments will not immediately pay off and are not even communicable. Consider, for example, the investments into Healthcare.gov, the online marketplace that brings together health care providers and citizens to increase health care coverage. The initial investment of several hundred million dollars is impossible to translate into increases in nationwide health or a more supportive and social nation-state, for example. Measuring the value of a more responsive government that is willing to open channels to directly interact with the public is equally difficult to assess.
Summary
Social media applications have been widely adopted in government as agencies use them to connect to citizens in order to inform them about mission-relevant updates. Often information created for the e-government website is reused for social media sites and sent out through these channels to reach a broader audience.
However, public sector organizations are still experimenting to replicate the lessons learned from political online campaigning and to translate them into day-to-day governance activities. The lack of rules and regulations on how to apply social media tools has resulted in slower adoption and the need to design social media strategies and policies. A social media strategy outlines how online interactions on third-party social networking services support the mission of a government organization. A social media policy guides employees' behavior when they use personal social media as a private person and when they use social media on behalf of the agency to avoid any missteps that will attract negative attention. It is also used to guide citizens' behavior when they seek to interact with an agency online.
Managerial challenges remain to show the value proposition of social media use in the public sector. Social media managers have to provide evidence to highlight how communication with citizens has become more effective and efficient and has potentially led to the desired behavioral changes or helped to improve the reputation of government.