Twitter in e-Participation

Krems.
The next CeDEM 2011 session starts with a presentation by Peter Mambrey, whose focus is on the potential role of Twitter in e-participation. He begins by noting the expansion of the media ecology and the take-up of new media forms by specific groups in society; this creates new opportunities for political participation and self-empowerment, but also challenges for local administration and government.

There is a rising expectation of service quality, growing demands for local service delivery and expertise, competition between cities for citizens and enterprises, demographic change (with a marked population decline in some areas in Germany, for example), and financial problems in the wake of the global financial crisis. General questions include transparency and input-legitimacy, dialogue and output-legitimacy, collaboration and participation, identity management and public relations, and an erosion of the representative system (also through lobbying).

Peter’s research project examined the use of Twitter by the German city of Duisburg; it captured some 800 tweets by the account itself, categorising and analysing them. To what extent does such use connect people electronically, create mutual awareness, and create mutual activities?

Historically, German governments at different levels have been slow to adopt such social media tools – they are not used to these tools, and the approach required to participate effectively in social media tends to be alien to the standard modus operandi in government. Duisburg already has a rich media environment, with various print and broadcast media and a broad range of online media.

Tweets made by the Duisburg account are largely related to the local area, of course; they address Twitter’s ‘what are you doing?’ question only rarely, and instead focus on areas like news (including the weather), culture, education and history, and leisure and sports; politics traffic, health, and environment and work make up some of the more minor categories. (At 11% of tweets, politics was still relatively strongly represented, though, but this may have been due to two elections during the research timeframe.)

Key omissions included religious themes (in spite of the significant Muslim population in Duisburg, for example), migrant topics, and university-related information, for example. Internal cross-linking between new media spaces was also observed; this adds redundancy and fosters awareness and visibility of online information.

The follower network of the Duisburg account is also interesting; there is a strong local focus, of course, but also followers from a wide range of other locations in Germany and elsewhere. It is difficult to read these data effectively, however, as location information on Twitter is notoriously unreliable. There has been a steady but non-explosive follower growth; Twitter is a stable but niche phenomenon, so far.

The account reports on daily unspectacular events in near real time, and the genre is infotainment rather than dialogue, deliberation, and participation, so far; it virtually represents the local through different media formats and creates publicity beyond traditional media. What results from this is the development of a local information and communication arena with high redundancy, presenting a positive and bright picture of the city.

How do such new formats sit alongside more established formats, then; how do they engage in agenda setting and framing local issues. Can they foster local democratic involvement, and what needs to be done by the local government to manage them; is there a need for more steering and local control of the initiative, for example?