Strategic use of Twitter in Local Government

A Northern Ireland Study

Tiago Picão

, Fiona McMahon

, Valerie Purchase

, Maurice Mulvenna

Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

School of Communication, University of Ulster, Londonderry, U.K.

TRAIL Living Lab, School of Computing and Mathematics, University of Ulster, Londonderry, U.K.

Keywords: Social Media, Local Government, Northern Ireland, Twitter Usage.

Abstract: This paper presents the results of a survey of Twitter usage in Northern Ireland’s twenty-six councils. The

data was gathered in Summer 2012. The research questions were developed from a review of the literature

on use of social media by government and focused on the role of social media as a communication channel

to local government, examining the dialogue between government and citizen and the sentiment of such

dialogue. The results show significant heterogeneity in Twitter use amongst the councils; with many not

engaging at all, while a small number were highly engaged with their citizens. Regardless of the

perspectives of the councils, there was evidence that there was a demand from the citizens for conversations

that was not being met by the councils. The paper recommends that councils need to define a social media

strategy in order to maximise the use of social media, but reflects that the councils should find it easy to

engage with citizens by simply asking them via Twitter.

1 INTRODUCTION

The social web provides governments with the

opportunity to achieve greater citizen engagement

and deliberative exchange (Rishel, 2011).

Microblogging sites such as Twitter, which allow for

the instant sharing of updates, opinions and

information, can help governments transform how

they relate to citizens (Aharony, 2012). However

social media adoption alone does not automatically

lead to improved government-citizen relationships

(Hand and Ching, 2011). Despite increasing pressure

on governments for greater transparency and

accountability, there is limited evidence to suggest

that they are capitalising on the interactive properties

of social network sites such as Twitter when

communicating with citizens (Hand and Ching,

2011); (Bonsón et al., 2011). Consequently, recent

studies have highlighted the need for research which

examines government use of social media and the

extent to which it is supporting a collaborative,

decentralised approach to governance (Dixon, 2010).

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

The transformative potential of social media to help

public, private and third sector organisations

enhance communication and ultimately democratise

relationships with their publics is well documented

(Kelleher, 2009); (Brainard and McNutt, 2010);

(Rishel, 2011). Supported by Web 2.0 technologies,

which inherently ‘facilitate creativity, information

sharing, and collaboration amongst users’ (O’Reilly,

2005), social media can be defined as a group of

Internet applications enabling the creation, sharing

and exchange of comments and content in virtual

communities or networks (Ahlqvist et al., 2010);

(Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). The most popular

social media by number of users globally, include

the social network sites Facebook, Twitter and

Pinterest (Viraj, 2012).

Social media’s ‘interactive and communal’

capabilities mean that individuals no longer simply

consume content but also produce and share content

of their own (Kaplan and Haelein, 2010). From an

organisational perspective, social media therefore

provides the opportunity to evolve from a ‘one to

many’ broadcast communicative approach to a

‘many to many’ model of communication, in which

249

Picão T., McMahon F., Purchase V. and Mulvenna M..

Strategic use of Twitter in Local Government - A Northern Ireland Study.

DOI: 10.5220/0004499002490255

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Data Communication Networking, 10th International Conference on e-Business and 4th

International Conference on Optical Communication Systems (ICE-B-2013), pages 249-255

ISBN: 978-989-8565-72-3

 2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

collaborative and participatory interactions with

stakeholders are proactively encouraged (Bruning et

al., 2007); (Chen, 2009); (Hearn et al., 2009). Social

media applications therefore enable organisations to

shift their communication style from a ‘one-way

flow of information’ to ‘dialogic engagement’

whereby views and opinions are openly exchanged

and negotiated to achieve mutually beneficial

outcomes (Kent et al., 2003).

‘Dialogue’ and ‘engagement’ are core tenets of

the UK Government’s overall communication

policy. The policy aims to encourage more citizen

engagement in the democratic process by redefining

how Government and constituents interact (UK

Government, 2011). Bruning et al. (2007) suggest

that cities and citizens engaging in dialogic

communication have an increased propensity for

mutual understanding of each other and the issues at

hand. Hand & Ching (2011, p.364) describe social

networks as providing an ideal forum for citizen

engagement at a local level by supporting interaction

between residents and government as well as

between resident and resident. Such resident-to-

resident interactions can lead to personal

recommendations or electronic word-of-mouth (Ho

and Dempsey, 2010). They caution however that a

council’s presence on social networks does not

automatically result in increased citizen engagement.

Their findings suggest that in order for meaningful

interaction to occur, careful consideration must be

given to the tone and content of posts. Cities that

specifically elicited comments by asking questions

and posting positive, relevant content in a

conversational style tended to have a higher number

of comments. Citizens also responded well to timely

posts and comments, suggesting the need for city

councils to actively monitor and manage their social

media presence.

Bonsón et al. (2012, p.123) state that social

media are ideally placed to ‘enhance interactivity,

transparency and openness of public sector entities

and to promote new forms of accountability.’ They

suggest that through social media use the public

sector can not only increase access to agendas,

policies and news, but also improve both policy

making and public services by encouraging the

exchange of views and information. Importantly, the

use of social media for interaction and collaboration

is more likely to lead to increased trust and

empowerment amongst citizens, and social capital

within communities (Bertot et al., 2010).

UK Government departments recognise the

importance of technology to empower citizens to

become more actively involved in local governance

issues (Williams, 2009). Yet there is limited

evidence to suggest that technology use by local

government extends beyond the automation of

administrative processes to facilitate public access to

information and services (Dixon, 2010). The extent

to which local councils are adopting social media

and capitalising on its interactive capabilities

remains unclear (Welch et al., 2005); (Bertot et al.,

2010); (Dixon, 2010); (Hand and Ching, 2011). The

purpose of this study is to investigate the uptake and

use of the social network and micro-blogging site

Twitter by local councils in Northern Ireland.

Twitter is the one of the fastest growing social

network site globally, and is second most popular

(Viraj, 2012). It has multiple functionalities

providing different levels of interactivity (Bonsón et

al., 2012); (Burton and Soboleva, 2011). It allows

for instant messages (‘tweets’) of a maximum of 140

characters, which followers can then read, respond

to or share via ‘retweets’. Tweets generated can

either retweet content from others or can contain and

link to original content. The use of hashtags # and

mentions @ within tweets makes them more likely

to be found by people for whom the content is

relevant and interesting. Twitter can also be used to

respond to comments and questions publicly through

mentions, or engage in private, one to one

communication with followers via direct messaging.

This study is designed to ascertain if and how

councils in Northern Ireland are using Twitter. It

investigates whether councils use Twitter primarily

as an additional broadcast channel, or to support a

decentralised approach to government by

encouraging dialogic, many to many communication

with citizens. Finally it will examine whether

individuals are exchanging comments and content

relevant to local councils outside of official Twitter

channels.

3 RESEARCH FOCUS

AND METHODOLOGY

Previous studies have tended to discuss use of social

media in the public sector in broad terms with little

empirical data (Chun and Reyes, 2012). As

mentioned already, the purpose of this study is to

empirically investigate the uptake and use of Twitter

by local councils in Northern Ireland. Twitter was

identified as the main focus for this study since this

social media and micro-blogging platform has been

identified as the most commonly used by local

governments across Europe (Bonsón et al., 2012).

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The research focuses on fundamental questions

regarding Twitter usage by the councils. These

research questions include:

- Are councils using Twitter? And if so, how?

- Do councils use Twitter primarily as an additional

broadcast channel, or to support a decentralised

approach to government by encouraging dialogue?

- Do individual citizens exchange comments and

content relevant to local councils outside of

official Twitter channels?

- What topics are discussed by councils and

citizens?

- What kind of sentiment is evident in the dialogue

between councils and citizens?

Supported by the conclusions from the literature

review, we advanced our first hypothesis: “Councils

use Twitter as a broadcast channel of information

and events”. For our second hypothesis, we assumed

that information and events are useful and/or popular

subjects, as well as generally neutral and thus that

“Citizens follow and comment their Council’s

tweets with a positive or neutral sentiment”.

There are currently twenty-six councils in

Northern Ireland, ranging in type from city, borough

(BC), city & district (CDC), and district council

(DC) (See Figure 1). Over the Summer of 2012, data

pertaining to the twitter usage of these councils were

collected and then analysed. Twitter was used to

identify councils by name and if no council could be

easily identified, Twitter was searched using the

name of the geographic area. If this process revealed

no official Twitter account for the council and their

web site had no linkages to an official council

Twitter account, then that council was classed as

having no official Twitter account.

The research was carried out in two main stages;

an initial exploratory stage gathering basic statistics

for the Twitter usage by council, and then a more

detailed examination of content of what was being

tweeted and what conversations were on-going

between government and citizens. In the first stage,

the browser-based Twitter platform was used to

identify candidate council Twitter accounts. The

tweets from this set of candidate accounts were

browsed in order to determine that the account was

an official council account. In the second stage, we

used the Twitter platform and a sentiment-mining

tool called Repknight

in order to understand the

sentiment of the tweets. We also used the Repknight

tool to search the tweets from individual councils for

key words and phrases.

www.repknight.com

4 RESULTS

The initial approach showed that, among the 26

councils on Northern Ireland, a high number of them

(18) have registered a Twitter account, despite the

fact that the majority do not advertise it on their

webpage (Table 1). However, looking at both the

recent and long-term activity of the accounts

revealed a large discrepancy on Twitter usage. Five

of the existing accounts may be classified as inactive

(Antrim BC, Limavady BC, Magherafelt DC, Moyle

DC and Strabane DC), since there hasn’t been a

tweet for more than one year and, while active, they

registered a very low number of tweets. Curiously,

some of these accounts have a higher number of

followers than accounts that are more active. This

might indicate that, despite an absence of

commitment from these councils, there is demand

for such a channel of communication.

Nevertheless, compared to the population of

Northern Ireland and their respective councils, the

number of followers is very low, less than 1% in

most cases.

The only exceptions are Belfast CC (4.7%) and

Cookstown DC (1.2%). However, given that Belfast

is the capital city of NI, we should not rule out the

possibility of outsiders following it. Other cases

worth mentioning are the Armagh CDC and

Newtownabbey BC, which are followed by more

than 0.8% of the council’s population.

The remaining accounts show some activity

judging by the month of the last tweet, but with

different intensities. Belfast City Council is the

champion here with 6,589 tweets and the only one

with a history of more than 1,000 tweets.

Newtownabbey Borough Council comes close with

726 tweets, but the rest do not even reach 500.

Belfast City Council also manages to have both

more followers and tweets than the Northern Ireland

Assembly’s account.

All Twitter accounts are mostly used to

broadcast news and publicize events, but some

accounts are also used for other purposes. Ards BC

and Armagh CDC use twitter for tourism, with

information about places to visit and a quiz for

visitors. Ballymoney BC, Banbridge CC and Down

DC broadcast safety advice. Banbridge CC, Belfast

CC and Newtownabbey BC use their accounts for

matters concerning governance, like information on

public consultation, strategies or plans and calls for

grants.

The Northern Ireland Assembly tweets, included

here for comparative purposes, announce committee

meetings, resolutions and statements. Table 2 shows

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Table 1: General data about Council Twitter Accounts – 08-2012.

Council

No of

followers

Percentage of

Council/Assembly

Population (2010 Est.)

Total

number of

Tweets

Month of

last tweet

Twitter

link on

webpage

Northern Ireland Assembly 8,107 0.4505 3,255 08-2012 Y

Antrim Borough Council 25 0,0462 0 N/A N

Ards Borough Council 199 0,2545 164 08-2012 N

Armagh City and District Council 493 0,8300 234 08-2012 N

Ballymena Borough Council N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Ballymoney Borough Council 48 0,1569 190 07-2012 N

Banbridge District Council 121 0,2521 140 08-2012 N

Belfast City Council 12,579 4,6814 6,589 08-2012 Y

Carrickfergus Borough Council 91 0,2264 85 08-2012 Y

Castlereagh Borough Council N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Coleraine Borough Council 73 0,1285 101 08-2012 Y

Cookstown District Council 468 1,2752 386 08-2012 Y

Craigavon Borough Council 238 0,2543 348 08-2012 N

Derry City Council 844 0,7687 141 07-2012 N

Down District Council 98 0,1384 144 07-2012 N

Dungannon & South Tyrone Borough Council N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Fermanagh District Council N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Larne Borough Council N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Limavady Borough Council 254 0,7560 11 11-2010 N

Lisburn City Council N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Magherafelt District Council 65

0,1454

1 11-2010 N

Moyle District Council 4

0,0235

2 08-2010 N

Newry and Mourne District Council 133

0,1331

73 08-2012 N

Newtownabbey Borough Council 741

0,8864

726 08-2012 Y

North Down Borough Council N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Omagh District Council N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Strabane District Council 167 0,4165 6 01-2010 N

the relative number of tweets, re-tweets and

conversations over a two-month period in the

Summer of 2012.

The retweet rate or amplification rate (Kaushik,

2011) which is the rate at which citizens who follow

council’s Twitter accounts pass their content on to

others, varies from around 6% for the Northern

Ireland Assembly to 10% for Belfast City Council.

The other councils’ Twitter volume is too low for

the amplification rate to be meaningful statistically.

Another interesting observation is that the

majority (10) of the active accounts are following

other Twitter users, which could be suggestive of an

effort to use Twitter as social network rather than

only as a broadcast system. The analysis of 2012’s

June and July tweets reveals a mixed bag; while it

cannot be said that those which follow other users

are strongly engaging with them, the bulk of them

do re-tweet.

The exceptions are the Councils of Ballymoney,

Carrickfergus, Down and Newry and Mourne. On

the other hand, Belfast City Council stands out

again, as the one with a stronger engagement with

the community, not only by means of re-tweeting,

but also through conversation: amid 400 tweets there

were 53 conversations.

Newtownabbey Borough Council, while not re-

tweeting much, follows Belfast once more, with 8

conversations in the midst of 90 tweets.

The Northern Ireland Assembly only registered 4

conversations amidst 101 tweets. If we examine who

initiated these conversations (Table 3), it is easy to

conclude that citizens start the overwhelming

majority. Ards, Armagh and Cookstown Councils do

show a balance between initiators, but the total

number is too low to consider them a real exception.

The initial approach showed quite clearly that

most of the existing accounts have very low levels of

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activity and engagement with followers and/or other

twitter users.

The major exception is Belfast City Council,

while Newtownabbey Borough Council also

produces relevant activity, especially if compared

with the rest of the councils. The Northern Ireland

Assembly’s account follows both as the third most

active account, which justified, alongside its

different power level, its inclusion, together with

Belfast and Newtownabbey, in a second, more in-

depth, approach.

This second approach introduced new levels of

analysis, namely the content of other accounts’

tweets which mention the councils’ accounts, and

the sentiment associated with them. However, the

period of time analysed was different from the first

approach, encompassing only the month of August

2012. The reason for this was the impact of a single

event that occurred in Belfast in the previous month,

and originated a large amount of commotion on

social networks, thus skewing the results that could

have been obtained in a more “neutral” period. Even

then, the event, which consisted on the put down of

a dog (named Lennox), whose type is forbidden by

law, still sent ripples throughout the month, as can

be seen in Table 4. Of all the 5 most used keywords,

only the word “want” was used on a context not

necessarily related to the dog issue.

Table 4: Most used keywords for @BelfastCC and their

sentiment in August 2012.

Keywords for @BelfastCC

Keyword Pos. Neut. Neg. Total

Lennox 2,327 668 1,918 4,913

LennoxArmy 1,321 188 416 1,925

collar 432 141 612 1,185

ashes 232 175 623 1,030

want 748 0 232 980

It is interesting to note the polarisation of sentiment

relating to the dog; in particular the significant

negative sentiment detected in relation to ’Lennox’,

effectively flooding the @BelfastCC Twitter

account with significantly increased negative

sentiment. Despite all the commotion, there were no

answers given on the Council twitter account, which

triggered some users to “invade” conversations that

the Council maintained with other users, on other

topics. This “invasion” was also ignored by the

Council.

If we filter the content of tweets of other

accounts which mention the Belfast City Council

account, in such a way that we eliminate tweets

related to the dog issue, the remaining most used

keywords are all connected to events and/or

activities promoted by Belfast City Council (Table

5).

The fifth most used keyword, “Big” is actually

referring to a panoramic screen on the City Hall

Square, where the Olympic Games, Movies and

other audio-visual content was displayed. So, other

than in the case of the dog issue, followers of the

Belfast City Council twitter do not seem to use it as

way to communicate with their Council.

Table 5: Most used keywords for @BelfastCC, excluding

“Lennox”, and their sentiment in August 2012.

Keywords for @BelfastCC, excluding “Lennox”

Keyword Pos. Neut. Neg. Total

Belfast 199 139 96 434

City 189 41 59 289

today 142 42 30 214

Hall 140 35 28 203

Big 96 24 5 125

The analysis of the content of other account’s tweets

which mention the Newtownabbey Borough Council

account also revealed that the five most used

keywords are related to events promoted by the

council (Table 6). And here it was even more

strikingly evident than on the Belfast case, with the

first two being the name of the event, or “Shoreline

Festival”.

Table 6: Most used keywords for @ Newtownabbeybc and

their sentiment in August 2012.

Keywords for @ Newtownabbeybc

Keyword Pos. Neut. Neg. Total

Shoreline 4 2 1 7

Festival 3 2 1 6

Fun 5 0 0 5

Newtownabbey 3 2 0 5

weather 2 0 2 4

5 DISCUSSION

It is clear from the analysed data that councils in

Northern Ireland are still in the infancy in their use

of Twitter, despite the majority of them (73%)

having set up an account. Some Councils look to

have created an account without a strong

commitment to it, as can be seen by the low levels of

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activity and, more strikingly, by the absence of a

link for it on their Internet homepage. Furthermore,

the generally low number of accounts being

followed by a council and equally low amount of re-

tweets also point to a lack of understanding of what

Twitter, as a social network, is for. Thus, it is not

surprising that our first hypothesis was validated,

since tweets are mainly broadcasts about local news

and events, and, when conversations happen, they

are most often than not triggered by citizens.

Another reflex from this lack of understanding, is

what we call displacement, a phenomenon where the

Twitter account was set up to promote specific areas

of interest, like Tourism, rather than it being a

channel for communication with citizens. On the

other extreme, the majority of the accounts are a

mixed bag, where everything can go, from

announcing events to giving advice on safety issues.

At the end of the day, the image given is one of a

chaotic use of Twitter by Councils, which does not

look to be supported by any well-designed strategy

with clear objectives.

On the other side of the fence, as our second

hypothesis suggested, citizens look to be ready and

available to engage in dialog with their Councils.

There is a general trend for accounts to have more

followers than total tweets, which is an encouraging

signal of some pent-up demand by the citizenry that

councils seem to be ignoring. It has already been

mentioned earlier that conversations are rare, and

that citizen almost always triggers them. However,

this does not mean that councils are not responsible

for triggering involvement. If we look at the

inclusion of a council Twitter account name on

tweets from other users, in the cases of Belfast City

Council and Newtownabbey Borough Council, we

will see that the most used keywords are related to

tweets sent by those authorities. Moreover, these

keywords were used mostly with a neutral or

positive stance, as our hypothesis advanced.

Again, this shows that citizens are paying

attention to what the councils are outputting on

Twitter, and that it is the task of the councils to put

that attention to good use.

6 CONCLUSIONS

AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Bonsón et al. (2012, p.123) state that social media

including Twitter are ideally placed to ‘enhance

interactivity, transparency and openness of public

sector entities and to promote new forms of

accountability.’ The analysis presented on this paper

began with the observation that the majority of the

councils in Northern Ireland have set up a Twitter

account. However, there appears to be little clear

recognition of the potential benefits for councils in

encouraging more citizen engagement in the

democratic process, and in building greater

understanding and trust (Bruning et al., 2007). As

we dived deeper, we found a reality that was far

from such benefits. Many accounts are not active.

The use of Twitter by councils is, in most cases,

random at best, with tweets covering “what’s on” in

the moment. On other cases, the account was set up

with a specific end, such as tourism or economic

development.

However, it is remarkable that, despite the

perception of a general lack of objectives, not to

mention activity, they are being actively followed by

citizens and, in some cases, those numbers of

followers significantly exceed the number of tweets

output by the councils. The fact that the inclusion of

the councils’ Twitter account name on other

accounts’ tweets, happened mostly along words

connected to the former’s tweets, only strengthens

this observation. Thus, it seems to us that the

responsibility is on the councils’ side to make the

best of the attention their citizens are awarding them,

and perhaps it justifies something more than a social

media policy, but rather a social media strategy.

We would recommend that such a strategy starts

by identifying clear objectives, in articulation with

other strategies and plans in development and/or

implementation by the Council. As Hand & Ching

(2011, p.364) state for meaningful interaction to

occur, careful consideration must be given to content

of communication. This could also lead to the

definition of specific subjects or content areas (for

example, as tourism seems to be prioritised by some

councils) which might justify independent Twitter or

other social media accounts (or even different social

media for different subjects!), thus avoiding the

“mixed bag account” that characterises the current

reality. This decentralization of social media use by

councils could, in effect, trigger a more dialogistic

stance, as different teams and/or departments inside

the Council took the opportunity to converse with

their citizens about choices available to them.

As research has also highlighted, citizens also

responded well to timely posts and comments,

suggesting the need for city councils to actively

monitor and manage their social media presence

(Hand and Ching, 2011). Therefore another issue to

be addressed by such a strategy would be the “path”

or methodology adopted to answer citizen’s

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inquiries, which arguably would not be that much

different from what the councils already do in the

case of telephone and e-mail contacts. The

development of such pathways can support

individual staff and the organisation as a whole in

avoiding crises and responding in a timely manner to

issues as the arise (Owyang, 2011). And last but not

least, the strategy should include an evaluation plan,

to both evaluate the performance of the council use

of social media and allow self-learning about the

ways it can be used.

However, as a social media strategy is something

that would probably only come into effect in the

mid-to-long term, we leave another suggestion for

councils, which could be implemented in a very

short time: just ask followers on Twitter about what

they would like to see the council tweeting about

and start from there.

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