In Switzerland and its neighboring countries, the structures of local communication are currently undergoing significant changes due to digitalization, which also has direct impacts on municipal communication. Municipalities find themselves in a tension between digital and analog tools as they strive to balance tradition and innovation to meet the diverse needs of the entire population. While traditional communication tools such as informational flyers and press releases need to be continued and further developed, adoption of social media channels remains at the center of development for communicating municipal issues.

This contribution examines the relationship between different structural factors and social media adoption by municipalities. The paper presents the results of a comprehensive survey among 414 municipalities in all regions in Switzerland. Conducting a binary logistic regression, the paper examines which predictors lead to the use of social media in municipalities. Additionally, practical considerations for improving municipal communication, challenges, and future research are addressed. The results show that the size of the municipality and the use of social media by local council members are significant predictors for the use of social media in Swiss municipalities.

So far, scientific contributions related to citizen engagement on the contents published by governments on their social-media pages have been investigated mostly quantitatively from a content point of view. Indeed, these studies have always preferred metrics directly linked to posts and their corresponding reactions (like, comment, share, …) to measure citizen engagement (e.g. Gruzd et al., 2018; Haro-de-Rosario et al., 2018). While this approach is relevant in many regards, it focuses exclusively on the number of reactions triggered and, on some occasions, on the kind of content published on both side (the administration and the citizen). In this paper, we focus on the administrative perspective, i.e., on how engagement is perceived, managed, and strategically measured within public administrations. This organizational angle joins prior research on public administrations’ positions towards strategic communication and its management on social media (e.g. Mergel, 2016; Villodre et al., 202). To our knowledge, it is however one of the first attempts to uncover strategies related to citizen engagement specifically. To do so, we have collected data among communication managers in 15 cities located in Nordic countries. The interviews conducted between January and March 2024 helped better understand the most pressing challenges faced by these cities when trying to stimulate citizen engagement, how these challenges are addressed, and how engagement is monitored within public organizations.

This chapter provides an assessment of the distribution of state advertising to private media organizations in nine European countries. State advertising represents an indirect form of state aid wherein public funds are channeled to media outlets for purchase of specific advertising services. This funding scheme is seen both as an instrument to enhance media pluralism and as a possible avenue for media capture by governmental entities, hence enabling political clientelism. The regulation of state advertising as a form of indirect state sponsorship was scarcely studied in prior research. Attention was paid to the transparency mechanisms in the bidding process, criteria to award contracts, checks and balances mechanisms and reporting procedures. Depending on the national legal systems, a variety of concepts are used to refer to this type of state aid: institutional advertising, institutional communication, marketing communications, public government advertising, state assistance for the media, government-sponsored advertising and government communications. Prior research shows that public administrations are the primary investors in the media ecosystem. However, in some countries, there is no specific legislation nor specific obligations to ensure institutional and governmental transparency about the amounts of state advertising funding awarded to private media outlets.

This study aims to fill in the gaps in prior research and introduces a cross-country comparative analysis of government data on state advertising in nine countries that represent media systems models: the Polarised Pluralist system which is active in Spain and France, and the Democratic Corporative system, which is used in Austria, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. The variables selected for analysis are extracted from prior interdisciplinary research and focus on the relevant legal frameworks and regulations ensuring institutional transparency in the process of preparing tenders and awarding of advertising contracts. Data were collected between 2019 and 2022 within the context of an R&D research project funded by the Spanish Ministry for Science, Innovation and Universities. Results show significant cross-country variations regarding the level of institutional transparency in the allocation and distribution of state institutional advertising.

Faced with an increasingly heterogeneous population, the public sector is confronted with several diverse needs and a growing demand for innovative services. The mobility of individuals and migratory flows contribute to the growing fragmentation of the population, while the number of senior citizens is rapidly increasing (Wanner, 2014). Public sector therefore constantly adapts its range of services, as well as the ways to inform the population, in face of great diversity in terms of language proficiency and reading skills.

Easy-to-read and plain language are used more or less extensively in the United States and in Europe, as a way to simplify complex administrative language (Krieg-Planque, 2020). Nonetheless, public agents that adopt such tools do not always claim or refer to a strongly formalised method (Coblence et al., 2019). Current research appears to suffer from a lack of rigour and methodological clarity. Our study aims to fill this research gap determining the impact of communication on the accessibility of public services and testing methods that can be used to adapt public sector communication to the needs of the ageing society.

Thus, we study the potential of user-centred design (UCD) for public sector communication. UCD techniques allow to engage the target audience from the earliest stages of the creation process, to identify any potential problems and areas of improvement. Our study tests these techniques as part of a co-creation approach with senior citizens, a target audience which represents a real challenge for public sector communication. In collaboration with practitioners, we have created two short texts presenting two public services. These early prototypes are tested through qualitative interviews. Based on the experiences of the participants, we then develop new prototypes, which will be evaluated by a panel of experts. Our goal is to identify the significant differences between each communication product. The advantages and disadvantages of user-centred methods will be then clear and translated into tangible results, processed by a panel of experts. It will be possible to identify the practical implications of UCD techniques and our method can then be applied to other relevant subjects and target audiences, on the basis of the recommendations that will be drawn up as part of the project.

The paper is part of a larger PhD thesis. It deals with the methodological implications and settings for the study, opening the way to further steps of data collection and analysis.

References

Coblence, E., Lefebvre, P., & Pallez, F. (2019). La carte et le territoire de l’innovation publique: une exploration des démarches design. In M. Guenoun & N. Matyjasik (Eds.), En finir avec le New Public Management. IGPDE, coll.« Gestion publique »

Krieg-Planque, A. (2020). Quand la communication publique travaille son expression. Politiques de communication(1), 3-34.

Wanner, P. (2014). Une Suisse à 10 millions d'habitants: enjeux et débats. PPUR Presses polytechniques

The increased importance of the subsurface for taking on complex societal challenges such as climate adaptation and energy transition is not equally matched with an increased understanding of its value at the general public. Therefore, the EU has launched its Soil Deal Mission (EC, 2023; ESDAC, 2024) with two focal points: citizen engagement and soil literacy. Still too often, the subsurface – varying from shallow soil to deep underground – is approached as a collective good that stands at the disposal of any human activity. As a consequence, a tragedy of the commons (Hardin, 1968) is taking place before our very eyes; the quality and productivity of the soil is deteriorating by intense agricultural use and local communities suffer from induced seismicity caused by geo-energy activities.

These examples are an indication that the use of the subsurface has become more problematic and polarized in public policy-making and public debate (Roovers & Duijn, 2021). This complicates a constructive dialogue about the values the subsurface holds, between experts, policy makers and representatives of the general public (citizens and entrepreneurs). Our proposal aims at facilitating such constructive, value-oriented dialogues (Bryson, et al., 2014) for enhancing soil literacy through citizen engagement in two contrasting cases: the use of the shallow soil for climate adaptation in the urban area of Rotterdam and the use of the deep underground for energy transition projects in the rural region of Twente.

Through science communication (Kappel & Holmen, 2019) about the characteristics, qualities and functions of the subsurface (e.g. FAQ EU-Soils Portal), we will facilitate structured dialogues (Wagenknecht et al., 2021) between experts and citizens, supported by imaginaries and narratives crafted by design and participatory work forms (Gastil, 2017). These dialogues are grounded in visual ethnography (Pink, 2021; Van den Scott, 2018) to enable the imagination of ‘large issues to small places’ (Hylland-Eriksen, 2015). Supported by designers and artists, the value of the subsurface for tackling complex issues close to home, becomes insightful and understandable for non-expert citizens, through creating tangible artefacts that serve as boundary objects (Star & Griesemer, 1989) between the genius loci of local communities (Vecco, 2020) and the abstract knowledge of subsurface experts.

As such, we aim at enhancing the soil literacy at citizens, by co-creating in-depth understanding about the value of the subsurface for problems that are meaningful to them in their own environment. In turn, our approach seeks to support subsurface experts in learning how their in-depth knowledge can be better tailored to the knowledge needs of non-experts and gain more insight into the questions they hold with regard to the role of the subsurface for enhancing the quality of living.

References

Bryson, J.M., B.C. Crosby, L. Bloomberg (2014). Public value governance: Moving beyond Traditional Public Administration and the New Public Management, Public Administration Review, 74(4): 445- 456.

ESDAC. Citizen Engagement and Soil Literacy. JRC. https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/euso/citizen-engagement. Retrieved, February 20, 2024.

European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, EU missions (2023). Soil deal for Europe – What is the EU mission – A soil deal for Europe, Publications Office of the European Union, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/171313

Gastil, J. (2017). Designing public deliberation at the intersection of science and public policy, in: The Oxford Handbook of the Science of Science Communication, K. H. Jamieson, D. M. Kahan, D. A. Scheufele (eds.). Oxford University Press, pp. 233–242. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190497620.013.26

Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, New Series, Vol. 162, No. 3859, pp. 1243-1248.

Hylland-Eriksen, T. (2015). Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology. Fourth, Edition, Pluto Press.

Kappel K., S.J. Holmen (2019). Why Science Communication, and Does It Work? A Taxonomy of Science Communication Aims and a Survey of the Empirical Evidence. Front. Commun. 4:55. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2019.00055

Pink, S. (2021). Doing Visual Ethnography. Fourth Edition. Sage Publications Ltd.

Roovers, G., M. Duijn (2021). Interventions in the Subsoil in the Netherlands —Tension between Central Planning and Local Acceptance. Open Journal of Political Science, Vol 11, pp. 1-11.

Star, S. L., J. R. Griesemer (1989). Institutional Ecology, 'Translations,' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907 - 1939. Social Studies of Science Vol.19, pp. 387-420.

Van den Scott, J.K. (2018). Visual Methods in Ethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 47(6) 719–728.

Vecco, M. (2020). Genius Loci as Meta Concept. Journal of Cultural Heritage, Vol. 41, pp. 225-231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.culher.2019.07.001

Wagenknecht K., T. Woods, C. Nold, S. Rüfenacht, S. Voigt-Heucke, A. Caplan, S. Hecker, K. Vohland (2021). A question of dialogue? Reflections on how citizen science can enhance communication between science and society. Journal of Science Communication, 20(03), pp. 1-22, https://doi.org/10.22323/2.20030213