Conference Agenda

Citizen participation through social media engagement has become a core objective of communication in public administrations. While engagement approaches did not emerge with social media, these platforms have created opportunities for participation that public organizations want to seize. Scholars have researched how citizens could be involved in policy-making through the roles they play (Wukich, 2021), and have highlighted the influence of certain factors on engagement. These factors include citizens’ mood, the type and purpose of content, and the characteristics of social media platforms (Contri et al., 2023; Haro-de-Rosario et al., 2018; Gruzd et al., 2018). However, research has approached social media engagement from an administration-centered perspective, despite of its citizen-oriented nature. This translates into a scarcity of research around the study of citizen perceptions of participatory and interactive dynamics on social media. There is a need to better understand citizen expectations, and how they align with governments’ communication practices.

Our study aims to address this gap by collecting data on citizen expectations regarding government communication on social media, how they assess this communication, and what motivates their participation. The main research questions guiding our work are:

• What are the main expectations of citizens regarding government communication on social media?

• And how are citizens’ expectations aligned with governments’ communication practices on social media?

Our study takes place in Quebec, a Canadian province where numerous municipalities use social media, and generally advocate for increased citizen participation on these channels. Using a quantitative exploratory approach, we conducted a survey in collaboration with 12 municipalities, targeting citizens who actively engage with them on social media.

Our study contributes to the understanding of citizen engagement on digital platforms, expanding our knowledge from a citizen perspective. This is important as citizen perceptions shape intentions, which usually conform the citizen behavior that public administrations will face. This reinforces public management paradigms based on citizen-centric approaches, such as Smart Governance (Noveck, 2015). Moreover, our study takes into account previous explanatory factors of citizen engagement, usually treated in an atomized way, and integrates them into a single model to explore engagement. Our findings will help public managers better understand their audiences and tailor their online communication to citizen aspirations.

References

Contri, M., Fissi, S. & Gori, E. (2023) Using social media for supporting engagement in the public sector: a systematic literature review. Local Government Studies, 1-23.

Gruzd, A., Lannigan, J. & Quigley, K. (2018) Examining government cross-platform engagement in social media: Instagram vs Twitter and the big lift project. Government Information Quarterly, 35(4), 579-587

Haro-de-Rosario, A., Sáez-Martín, A., & del Carmen Caba-Pérez, M. (2018) Using social media to enhance citizen engagement with local government: Twitter or Facebook? New Media & Society, 20(1), 29-49.

Noveck, B. S. (2015). Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and The Future of Governing. Harvard University Press.

Wukich, C. (2021). Government Social Media Engagement Strategies and Public Roles. Public Performance & Management Review, 44(1), 187-215.

After more than two decades of social media platforms in governments and public administrations, now they are evolving in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Since their inception, when they were oriented to fostering communicative capabilities and external interactions in innovative ways (Criado et al., 2013; Mergel, 2013), social media technologies have been adopted by government and public administration for several motives (Sandoval-Almazan, et al., 2021). Here, different strategies and objectives could be suggested, including self-promotion of activities (DePaula et al., 2018), internal management improvement (Criado et al., 2017), advancing transparency practices (Villodre, 2024), developing engagement processes with external actors (Wukich 2022), or public services delivery (Criado & Villodre, 2021; Young, 2022). All these capabilities have been experienced in different sectors (Mabillard et al., 2025; Meijer & Thaens, 2013; Villodre & Criado, 2020), or even levels of government (Criado & Villodre, 2022; Sandoval-Almazán et al., 2018). In this paper, we explore the next wave of social media platforms implementation in the public sector, that we suggest it is directly linked with the adoption of AI technologies, exploring their potential opportunities and barriers in different dimensions of public organizations.

Methodologically, this empirical paper will be grounded on the utilization of a survey administered to public managers at the local level of government. This survey is based on previous observations about the utilization of social media in the Spanish largest municipalities, and the perceptions of public managers concerning different dimensions of social media adoption, management, and use. Besides, this version of the survey includes some questions about AI adoption to improve social media management in governments and to understand potential barriers to its application. Also, the content of the questionnaire addresses how this group of public managers perceive the challenges they are facing with disinformation in municipal public spheres, and how they are tackling them. All these aspects will be presented offering the latest results of an study that is part of an ongoing and greater research project that explores different dimensions of AI adoption and implementation in the public sector.

The results of this paper will be of interest for the content of this public marketing and communication group in several ways. On the one hand, this study is intended to expand the dialogue with several scholars working in the field of social media from the communication studies side. On the other hand, the results will inform the enduring debate about the potential of social media to promote the communicative capabilities of public authorities and institutions. Besides, this study will make a unique contribution discerning to what extent AI can be adopted to promote social media technologies in public organizations, and to what extent they are potential partners in the nearest future. Finally, other side of the analysis will discern how all these elements are rooted in our approach to the challenges that public administration are facing in this moment of polarization, and democratic backsliding.

While the use of social media influencers (SMIs) has become a common practice in private-sector marketing, their role in public-sector communication remains underexplored. Yet, public organizations are increasingly turning to SMIs to enhance engagement, particularly with younger or harder-to-reach audiences. This article investigates how public organizations perceive the benefits, risks, and ethical boundaries associated with influencer collaborations in public organizations. It also the types of collaborations these organizations seek when hiring SMIs. Drawing on insights from 19 semi-structured interviews with social media managers in France, Belgium, Canada and Luxemburg, the study proposes a better understanding of influencer engagement in the public sphere. The findings shed light on the evolving role of SMIs as intermediaries in public service communication and contribute to the theoretical development of digital communication in the public sector. The article concludes with practical recommendations to help public organizations balance innovation, transparency, and accountability when incorporating influencers into their communication toolbox.