Abstract
This paper explores the use of government social media for openness and accountability. The extant literature has highlighted the benefits of social media use in this context to enhance citizen participation and engagement in decision-making and policy development, facilitate openness and transparency efforts, and reduce corruption. Yet, there are limited studies that discuss those properties of social media that can afford openness and accountability, and their implications for policy and practise. To address these gaps, a study is conducted in the Greek context using interviews with top managers, policy makers, and relevant stakeholders across five initiatives. We discuss distinct affordances for openness and accountability, and propose their inclusion as building blocks of the national ICT policy for openness and accountability. Finally, we provide the implications of the affordances lens for policy and practise, the limitations of the study and future research avenues.
1. Introduction
Social media “employ mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms via which individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content” (Kietzmann et al., 2012). The particular attribute of social media which sets it apart from other existing forms of communication is its reliance on user-generated content, i.e. the content created and shared by end-users or the general public in real time using computers and mobile devices, allowing, thereby, ‘many-to-many’ communication (ibid). A survey by McKinsey suggests that 65% of companies are using Web 2.0 technologies (Bughin et al., 2010), whereas according to Forrester Research, the corporate spending on social media by the end of 2013 will reach $4.6 billion (Young et al., 2008).
7. Conclusion
This paper studied the use of social media for openness and accountability in the public sector, using five case vignettes in the Greek context. Our study contributes to the literature on the use of social media for openness and accountability in the public sector, discussing the affordances of social media for openness and accountability and conceptualises the affordances as building blocks of social media functionality types for openness and accountability using the model of Kietzmann et al. (2011; 2012). Furthermore, the paper contributes to the literature examining governance strategies for public consultation and interaction for public policy making and implementation, suggesting the inclusion of both affordances and social media functionalities in the strategic design of social media for openness and accountability in the public sector; it also adds to the debate on transforming the role of citizen from a passive adopter to a co-creator of policies.
