External transparency and social media. Ministries and public agencies differential roles in Twitter

Authors

  • Julián Villodre Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Anne-Marie Reynaers Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Juan Ignacio Criado Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18042/cepc/rep.192.07

Abstract

The disruptive nature of social media has revealed within public administrations the need for a change towards more flexible and open structures. In fact, this was one of the arguments that led to agency processes in the Spanish public sector during the last decade. Therefore, one might expect that the adoption of social media in public agencies would have been less disruptive, with a clear orientation towards transparency, participation and collaboration. In that sense, this paper aims to study to what extent differences between public agencies and ministries can be identified in relation to the provision of public information in Twitter. For this purpose, we monitorized the activity of public agencies and the ministries. Our Twitter data is analyzed by using a user role taxonomy based on Twitter data. Results show a certain tendency of public agencies to be active participants in the dissemination of public information, and of the ministries to be passive objects of diffusion.

Published

2021-06-14

Issue

Section

ARTICLES