Social Media for Civic Engagement

To explore the relationship between form of municipal government and deployment of social media tools for civic engagement, the authors conduct an analysis of a random set of purposively selected cities for content analysis of their social media tools. The authors use the seven forms of government identified by Nelson and Svara (2012) as the basis by which to select the sample cities. Across forms of government, there is no apparent pattern on deployment of social media tools for civic engagement. Municipalities of every form are using the tools, primarily Facebook and Twitter, and most, regardless of form, are not using the tools in a social manner. This finding is consistent with previous work by the authors and others. Important areas for future research are identified in a closing discussion.