1. 3 ways to engage citizens
using social media
Gohar Feroz Khan
Research: http://laton.wikispaces.com/Brief+Vita
Twitter: @gfkhan
Copyright 2013 Gohar Feroz Khan

2. What is Social Media?
 Social media consists of a variety of tools and
technologies that includes:
 Collaborative projects (e.g., Wikipedia),
 Blogs (e.g., WordPress) and microblogs (e.g.,
Twitter),
 Content communities (e.g., YouTube),
 Social networking sites (e.g., Facebook), virtual
game worlds (e.g., World of Warcraft), and
 Virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life).

3. How may governments engage
citizens using social media?
Mainly, in three ways:
 1. Socialize Government Information
 2. Establish Mass Collaboration
 3. Establish Social Transaction

4. 1. Socialize Government
Information
 First, public sector can leverage social
media as an informational and
participatory channel to increase
citizen’s awareness and enable them to
monitor and participate in government
activities.

5. Socialization of information
can be achieved in two ways:
 Simple information socialization, and
 Complex information socialization.

6. Simple information
socialization
 Simple information socialization can be
achieved through merely incorporating
social media tools in the existing
government websites.
 e.g. through incorporating comments and
discussions feathures and through
establishing dedicated social media
pages/accounts (e.g. Facebook fan page
or Twitter account) to delivery day-to-day
information/news to the citizens.

7. Complex information
socialization
 Complex information socialization
requires establishing advance social
media or web 2.0 based informational
government portals for informational
and participatory purposes, such as:
 http://maplight.org/
 http://www.data.gov/about, and
 http://blogs.justice.gov/main/.

8. 2. Establish Mass
Collaboration
 Second, public sector can leverage
social media tools to poster mass social
collaboration between government and
citizens and cross agency collaboration.
 Mass collaboration can be instrumental
in crowd sourcing, regulation, and law
enforcement.

9. Example 1
 For example, the Peer-To-Patent
(www.peertopatent.com) initiative by the
Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
of the United States is a good example
of mass government and citizen social
collaboration in reinforcing regulations.

10. Example 2
 Another example is the Korean
government’s smart phone apps
developed to enable mass collaboration
in reporting illegal car parking, waste
disposal, energy misuse, and reporting
other inappropriate behaviour.
 Note: the author personally used some of the apps.

11. Example 3
 Similarly, another good example of
mass collaboration is the “apps for
democracy” initiative:
http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/appli
cation-directory/).
 A U.S. government initiative to engage
the public in developing new
applications for democracy.

12. 3. Establish Social
Transaction
 Third, public sector can use social
media tools to establish tangible online
transactions with the citizens.

13. Example 1
 For example, the U.K. government use
a Web 2.0 based website (www.gov.uk)
to provide simple, one-stop access to
government services online where
citizens can access to public services
such as:
 tax, driving test, passport, births, deaths,
marriages, and health care.

14. Example 2
 Another example of using social media for
service delivery is the “Fixmystreet” initiative:
http://www.fixmystreet.com/)
 Where citizens using an interactive portal
report a problem related to their locality (e.g.
fly tipping, broken paving slabs, or street
lighting) which is then forwarded to the
council to fix the problem.

15. Final note
 An important use of the socialization of
information is in situation where the
immediate delivery of information/news is
crucial, such as:
 disseminating news and information about public
safety and in crisis management situations such
as, weather, traffic, diseases, and nature or man-
made disasters.

16. About the Author
 Gohar Feroz Khan is an Assistant Professor
at Korea University of Technology &
Education. His research interest includes, IT
adoption, social information systems, and
Social media.
 Note: the 3 steps presented here are based
on our empirical study currently under review.