A Sentiment Analysis Of U.S. Local Government Tweets: The Connection Between Tone And Citizen Involvement

Keywords

Citizen participation; Social media; Web 2.0

Abstract

As social media tools become more popular at all levels of government, more research is needed to determine how the platforms can be used to create meaningful citizen-government collaboration. Many entities use the tools in one-way, push manners. The aim of this research is to determine if sentiment (tone) can positively influence citizen participation with government via social media. Using a systematic random sample of 125 U.S. cities, we found that positive sentiment is more likely to engender digital participation but this was not a perfect one-to-one relationship. Some cities that had an overall positive sentiment score and displayed a participatory style of social media use did not have positive citizen sentiment scores. We argue that positive tone is only one part of a successful social media interaction plan, and encourage social media managers to actively manage platforms to use activities that spur participation.

Publication Date

7-1-2015

Publication Title

Government Information Quarterly

Volume

32

Issue

3

Number of Pages

333-341

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2015.03.003

Socpus ID

84938290080 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84938290080

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