Social Media in the Public Sec-tor:

South Korea’s Twitter use-CeDEM Asia 2102 Workshop

Virtual Knowledge Studio (VKS)

Asso. Prof. Dr. Han Woo PARKCyberEmotions Research InstituteDept. of Media & Communica-tionYeungNam University214-1 Dae-dong, Gyeongsan-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do 712-749Republic of Koreahttp://www.hanpark.nethttp://eastasia.yu.ac.kr http://asia-triplehelix.org Many thanks to Chung Joo Chung, Seung-Eun Cho,

Feroz Khan, Yenn-Ok Lee, Ho-Young Yoon, and my re-search assistants.

• E-government has been variously conceived and justified • In nations with more open and democratic political sys-

tems, for example, e-gov initiatives are largely portrayed as a more cost-effective model of government, a mechanism for im-proving governance by facilitating citizen feedback and input, and a means for improving democratic practices.

• In more authoritarian nations, however, e-gov initiatives employ some of the same technologies, with similar goals, but with the overall goal of enhancing the government’s dominance over potential economic or political threats.

• Given these widely divergent views of e-governance, there is a significant need for analysis of recent and current e-gov-ernment initiatives, as well as further exploration of newer models of e-governance which employ mobile and social media.

• This panel will present e-government initiatives in Asia

-A workshop proposal written by Randy Kluver

Rationale for the panel

Muneo Kaigo is an Associate Professor of Communication and Media in the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College of Comparative Culture at the University of Tsukuba. His research involves social and psychological impacts in relation to communication technology and two-way audiovisual communication. He is also the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre country representative for Japan.

Leslie Tkach-Kawasaki is an Associate Professor of Politics and Political Communications in the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research involves political communication through the Internet and online methodologies. She is currently working on a project involving online and offline media utilization in local elections in Japan.

Introduction

New challenge for public administration The interactions between governments and their citi-

zens

e-Government Creating an online presence Allowing citizens to transact with the government elec-

tronically Integrating scattered systems

 

Introduction 

Engagement of citizens High quality online experiences Citizens, partners and co-creators of information

and services. Web 2.0 conditions to improve transparency

and foster innovation Interactive, context-rich, & easy-to-use applica-

tions

Attention toward and expectations for social media adoption by the government

Previous research of the government’s use of social media is restricted to Democratic participation Transparent information sharing Better communication with the public

Social Media Use in the Pub-lic Sector

The social media use of government agencies worldwide USA: More than one social media account The U.K.: Adopted guidelines for social media

of government agencies South Korea: Promoting the guidelines of the

public sector Australia & Japan: Planning to use social me-

dia as an emergency communication channel

Social Media Use in the Pub-lic Sector

Theoretical frameworks under discussion a) updating news & relevant videos b) building relationships with the target audience, inter-

est groups, & social influentials c) acceptance of an unofficial voice  

Government-User interaction Users participate in a conversation on a topic which

has been specified through the government’s social media

The government directly listens to individuals’ informal human voice

Social Media Use in the Pub-lic Sector

Relationship with the public Decision-making process of public policy

  Recently, the Korean government has an-

nounced a policy of employing an online spokesman (e.g., twit-master, twit-reporter) Constant attention and immediate responses Successful interaction relies on the individuals with

whom the government usually interacts 

Social Media Use of Korean Government Agencies

Power A-list social media users Represent the potential power of information distribu-

tion

  Adoption of new media

Requires the public organization to make further efforts

  Practical needs

Adopting social media, with apparent advantages Yet additional effort is required

Social Media Use of Korean Government Agencies

A growing interest in how social media can be better understood theoretically and empirically

However, most research has been conducted in a West-ern context, with very few Asian or cross-cultural stud-ies

Within the small body of literature on social media outside the Anglophone world, social media has almost invariably been presented in the light of political oppo-sition  

Lacuna in prior literature

Project overview

To address this lacuna, this research will ex-plore how Korean government has embraced social media as a public communication channel

Its focus lies on interaction patterns

- between gov. agencies and the public- among gov. agencies in Korea- between Korea agencies and other countries

Mixed webometrics meth-ods

Decomposing every network is necessary to provide a holistic view 

- Information sources (URL parsing)

- Tweet messages (semantic analysis)

- Channel couplings (colink diagram) - Online connections (following relation)- Focus interview

“Webometrics refers to a set of research meth-ods that illustrates texts and their web linkages as a network and quantitatively examine the spreadable aspects of web-mediated communi-cation activities of social actors and issues (Jenk-ins, 2011), in comparison to traditional methods (Savage & Burrows, 2007; Salganik & Levy, 2012). ” (by Han Woo Park)

Seminal publications Garton, L., Haythornthwaite, C., & Wellman, B.

(1997). Studying online social networks. Jour-nal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(1).

Wellman, B. (2001). 'Computer networks as social networks,' Science, Vol. 293, Issue (14), pp. 2031-2034.

Park, H. W. (2003). Hyperlink network analysis: A new method for the study of social structure on the web. Connections, 25(1), 49-61 .

Park, H. W., & Thelwall, M. (2003). Hyperlink analyses of the World Wide Web: A review. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communica-tion, 8(4).

Recent special issues Special issues

- Social Science Computer Review, 2011, 29(3) Theme: Social Networking Activities Across Countries

- Asian Journal of Communication, 2011, 21(5), Theme: Online Social Capital and Participation in Asia-Pacific

- Scientometrics, 2012, 90(2)Theme : Triple Helix and Innovation in Asia using Scientomet-rics, Webometrics, and Informetrics

- Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2012, 17(2)Theme: Hyperlinked Society

Selected publications Recent publications

- Park, H. W., Barnett, G. A., & Chung, C. J. (2011). Structural changes in the global hyperlink network: Centralization or diversification. Global networks. 11 (4). 522–542

- Lim, Y. S., & Park, H. W. (2011). How Do Congressional Members Appear on the Web?: Tracking the Web Visibility of South Korean Politicians. Government Information Quarterly. 28 (4), 514-521.

- Sandra González-Bailón, Rafael E. Banchs and Andreas Kaltenbrunner (2012). Emotions, Public Opinion, and U.S. Presidential Approval Rates: A 5-Year Analysis of Online Political Discussions Human Communication Research

- Sams, S., Park, H. W. (2012 forthcoming). The Presence of Hyperlinks and Messages on Social Networking Sites: A Case Study of Cyworld in Korea. Journal of Computer-Mediated Com-munication

- Nam, Y., Lee, Y.-O., Park, H.W. (2013, March). Can web ecology provide a clearer understand-ing of people’s information behavior during election campaigns?. Social Science Information.

18Borgatti et al (2009)

Types of SNA data• Whole-network method- Measuring all connections with others

in group - Population

• Ego-centric method- Snowballing- Sample

• A combined method

Between Korea gov. agencies & the public

• 23 out of 32 ministries opened accounts in 2010.• Governments displayed high levels of reciproc-

ity.• Generalized regression model: The most

important factor positively influencing the number of followers was whether an institution has a full-time staff to manage a twitter account.

January to August in 2011.

40.6%

15.6%

15.6%

28.1%

95% 90% 80% Below 80%

71.8% of Korean government agencies have recorded more than 80% of reciprocal relationship.

40.6% of the institutions have recorded more than 95% reciprocal rate.

January to August in 2011.

Overall use of twitter in Singa-pore

For Singapore, three out of 17 have no fol-lowing.

Only Singapore Civil Defense Force (@sCDF), have more than 10 percent reci-procity (87.9%).

The department of Urban Redevelopment Authority (@uRAsg) displays 9.6 percent,

the department of Health Promotion Board (@hPBsg) displays 5.4,

and the department of Reaching Everyone for Active Citizenry Home displays 4.0 at reciprocity rate.

The rest of them were lower than 4.0 per-cent at their reciprocity rate.

August 2011 to January 2012

What about other coun-tries?

Except for Korean departments, the rest of de-partments from other countries displayed low levels of reciprocity rate in Twitter connection.

In particular, Japan and Singapore conserva-tively manage government’s Twitter accounts in that they generally have a few number of follow-ing, compared to the number of followers.

Can a reciprocity rate be a proxy indicator for a government’s willingness for interactive commu-nication with the public overall?

August in 2011 to January 2012

Between Korea gov. agencies & the public

Words such as “service”, “safety”, “support”, and “policy” are prevalently used and entangled with other socio-political words in RTed messages by government institutions.

Words such as “health”, “education” and “agenda” are also occasionally used but these words are not frequently linked with other socio-political words.

Words frequently RTed by many institutions tend to be general information of governments related to the public support and safety rather than institution-specific information. January to August in 2011.

Visualization: Co-occurrence Words Net-work

of RTed Tweets by Government Institutions

(1) At least by two govern-ments (2) At least by six govern-

ments

Economic & Welfare related : Triangle & Purple Socio-Political related : Square and YellowEtc : Circle and Green

January to August in 2011.

Among gov. agencies in Korea

Diverse subjects and a large cluster representing Blue House speeches.

Other clusters for the Korean government ad-dressed mainly environmental issues such as nu-clear power plant accidents in Japan

and domestic construction around the four rivers that the Blue House promoted.

For example, the bottom left corner includes the words “bicycle” and “way” among others, referring to the construction of bicycle lanes around the rivers.

Keywords shared by 40 gov. agencies (Korea)

between February and August 2011

Keywords shared by ministries (USA)

In the case of the U.S., RTed keywords were clus-tered according to policy areas such as the econ-omy, health care, and the space-program, al-though most keywords were related to domestic politics with respect to White House speeches (top left corner).

The words “congress,” “bill,” “pass,” and “support,” among others, indicate President Obama’s efforts to gain cooperation from the U.S. Congress,

and the words “tax,” “plan,” “economy,” “change,” “need,” and “work,” among others, the policy realm of these efforts.

Keywords shared by 40 gov. agencies (U.S.)

between February and August 2011

Between Korea agencies and other countries - Twitter networks among governmen-

tal agencies in seven countries

• The U.S. is the most central.• None of the Japanese governments is

connected with U.S. • Contrast with the followings from var-

ious countries, only one U.S. depart-ment follows one account of U.K. and Singapore government accounts, re-spectively.

August in 2011 to January 2012

Twitter networks among governmental agencies in seven countries

August in 2011 to January 2012 * indegree/outdegree values are normalized

Domestic administra-tion

Public welfare International relations

President Health Foreign

PrimeMin Labor Defense

Finance Gender

Education FairTrade

Justice CivilRight/Welfare

Culture VeteransAgriculture and

FoodEconomy/Energy

Environment

Tax

Customs

Statistics

Security

Land/Region

Communication

Information

Categories by depart-ments

Networks among the departments of domestic administration

• Only one connection: from the department of Agriculture and Agri-Food in Canada to the department of Agriculture in the United States.

• Innovation, Industry, Science & Research and that of Broadband, Communication & Digital Economy in Australia follow NASA and FCC in the U.S., respectively.

• Energy & Climate Change in U.K. follows the department of Energy in the U.S. And Justice Treasury departments in U.K. are asymmetrically connected with White House and Treasury department in the U.S.

Networks among the departments of domestic adminis-tration

Austrailia-Yel-low

Canada-Limegreen

Japan-RedKorea-BlueSingapore-PinkUK-WhiteUSA-Orange

August in 2011 to January 2012

Networks among the departments of international relations

• Two cliques were created: one is composed of inter-national-related departments of U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia and the other is composed of only Ko-rean departments except for one line with State De-partment of U.S.

• In the second clique, Korean Defense is asymmetri-cally connected with State Department of U.S., imply-ing that the national defense of Korea more or less re-lies on domestic affairs in the U.S.

• It is interesting that the Korean Defense department does not follow the account of U.S.’s Defense despite the same field.

Networks among the departments of international rela-tions

Austrailia-Yel-low

Canada-Limegreen

Japan-RedKorea-BlueSingapore-PinkUK-WhiteUSA-Orange

Networks among the departments of public welfareAustrailia-Yel-

lowCanada-

LimegreenJapan-RedKorea-BlueSingapore-PinkUK-WhiteUSA-Orange

U.S. and Others

Discussion Issues- Between Kor. Gov and Pub-

lic High reciprocal rate: Attempts to

strengthen the communication networks between the Korean government & online citizens through Twitter

Info. distribution or interactive communica-tion

Do usage patterns reflect a national cul-ture?

- Collectivist V.S Individualistic settings– Return Favor

E.g. if you follow me, I will follow you

Discussion Issues- Among government agencies

The Offices of the President in Korea and U.S. positively participated in social media conversations– However, its active interaction may not al-

ways lead to the effect of topic development & information distribution.

Some governments, including U.K., U.S., and

Australia, indeed have guidelines of social me-dia use by governmental organizations and of-ficials.

Kor. used its Twitter accounts to collectively promote its agendas,

- re-tweeting common contents - mostly link gov. sources of information U.S. used to share various agendas of individual

departments or agencies.- re-tweeting for a specific purpose- private sources are hyperlinked to inform the public

of its activities

Discussion Issues- Among government agencies

Discussion Issues- Between Korea agencies and other countries

Governmental twitter networks across countries are asymmetrical (U.S.-dominated) and tend to be formed between the similar depart-ments.

- What are roles of online activities of U.S. gov-ernmental institutions on social networking sites?

- How can we measure a hidden interaction pro-cesses and practices between U.S. and other countries in terms of online governmental com-munication?

Discussion Issues How do Asian cultural environments in-

fluence the ways in which citizens form and use public SNS relationships?

How can we measure public participa-tion in the Asian context using social media data?

How are social media used as a direct communication channel between pol-icy makers and citizens?

Limitation & Suggestion

Statistically verifying whether the Twitter have of-fered an alternative space for information shar-ing, interaction, & discussions of various topics

- Cross-national/cultural strategies? Further research

e-Government processes Impact evaluation processes in an online context The systematic application of institutionalizing quality

citizen participation