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The Post-Adoption Behaviors of Government Social Media in China

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Sub-National Democracy and Politics Through Social Media

Part of the book series: Public Administration and Information Technology ((PAIT,volume 29))

Abstract

Lots of government agencies have adopted social media to enhance transparency, improve services, and facilitate interaction, but the implementation and impacts after their adoptions are not well documented in the existing literature. In this chapter, we use the case of China to examine the post-adoption behaviors of government social media. We reveal that government microblog in Sina Weibo is largely inactive and lack of concrete influences, despite a handful of accounts perform overwhelmingly well. Microblog is primarily used for one-way propaganda instead of two-way interaction, which undermines its potential of coproduction and cocreation. While social media are adopted, either voluntarily or mandatorily, their sustainable operations and maintenances are still problematic. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of the results.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Jian Huang for data collection. This chapter is financially supported by the NSFC grant (No. 71774164).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

    Liang Ma

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  1. Liang Ma
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Correspondence to Liang Ma .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science and Public Administration, UludaÄŸ University, Bursa, Turkey

    Mehmet Zahid Sobacı

  2. Department of Political Science and Public Administration, UludaÄŸ University, Bursa, Turkey

    Ä°brahim HatipoÄŸlu

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Ma, L. (2018). The Post-Adoption Behaviors of Government Social Media in China. In: Sobacı, M., Hatipoğlu, İ. (eds) Sub-National Democracy and Politics Through Social Media. Public Administration and Information Technology, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73386-9_2

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