Social Media Increases Cititizen's Engagement in Local Government

Civic engagement is challenging to achieve in a culture where individuals no longer assemble around mutual public spaces, such as a town hall or school board meeting. It is becoming more difficult for governments and elected leaders to reach citizens who divide their time between a variety of social groups, various activities, travel and more (Crowdsourcing.org, 2011). Social media are efficient tools used to reach citizens seeking alternative methods to participating in governance. Using social media at the local level seems to offer the promise of increased citizen engagement reaching citizens on a common platform and allowing for citizen comments (Hand & Ching, 2011)

The evolution of social media has essentially changed the communications process and is playing a larger role in the lives of everyday people. Populations are utilizing the internet to find information, look for entertainment and purchase products as well as creating connections with friends or colleagues. Social media tools are beginning to make their way into local governments also. At least one survey by the Public Technology Institute found that 72 percent of responding Chief Information Officers claimed to be using or planned on using Facebook or Twitter in outreach efforts (Trenker, 2010). As governments seek to engage citizens, promote transparency and advance public service, social media technologies have been incorporated into the governmental workplace and have been seen as helpful tools to promote public goals (Oliveira & Welch, 2013).

Although governments are gradually exercising digital channels to communicate with citizens, many entities continue employing traditional approaches, e.g. newsletters through emails, flyers, and word of mouth. Others too...

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...information, resources, etc.

Limitations and Delimitations

Over the next few weeks the intent is to gather information from council members and township residents through semi structured interviews and electronic surveys. The constraints of this project will include information acquired from the community leaders and residents of Eastampton. Electronic surveys will be utilized to conduct this research therefore, those with internet access may participate. The survey is designed to gather a statistically valid sample from the population. The number of responses for the defined area may be small, therefore the results may not reflect the entire area. The survey is self-reporting so the researcher is to assume that all answers are truthful. Social media is a relatively new phenomenon in local government thus, literature pertaining to this topic is in its early stages.