Over the past few years, more and more Swedish municipalities have chosen to establish a presence on social media with Facebook in particular in order to expand their communication with their citizens. At the same time, the level of citizen participation in local democratic and political processes has been low. With social media, an opportunity has been created for municipalities to reach out to a larger part of their audiences and get them more involved in the municipal operations that affects the daily lives of the citizens. The purpose of this study is to examine how municipalities within Uppsala County are utilizing Facebook to communicate with their citizens. The research questions are as following: “How does the municipalities communication on Facebook correspond with their communication documents” and “How does the municipalities communicate with their citizens based on representation and engagement?” The theoretical framework for this study is based on Ines Mergels theory on social media use and adoption among government organizations. The methods consist of a quantitative as well as a qualitative content analysis. In total, there were 100 Facebook posts examined with the main result showing that the municipalities generally do not focus on using Facebook posts as a way to increase democratic participation directly on Facebook. Rather, they use Facebook posts to inform citizens about democratic and political events happening in the real world. This study provides the perspective of eight different municipalities and by doing so contributes with a broader picture of how Swedish municipalities communicate with their citizens through Facebook.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-353778 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Lindqvist, Magnus, Melin, Fred |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Medier och kommunikation, Uppsala universitet, Medier och kommunikation |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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