Mabillard, Vincent
The state-citizen relationship on social media: Trends and typical profiles of French towns and cities
- 2024.
31
Scientific research has revealed the potential of social media to disseminate government information and transform the dynamics of citizen engagement. However, fully exploiting this potential remains difficult, especially in public organizations. The success and effects of these new forms of interaction offered by social media have not yet been fully explored. At the local level, many municipalities are experimenting with these media in an incremental and sometimes disorganized way. Only a few are actively measuring their performance and their digital interactions with users. Different models have been proposed to describe the types of government communication and activity on social media. They are discussed in this article through three different phases: diffusion, interaction, and transaction. Comparing various indicators on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram helps to better assess how social media are used at the local level. This work, both conceptual and empirical, allows us to create a typology of the activity and interaction of French municipalities of over 50,000 inhabitants on the most popular social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram).