Big brother is watching you! Or, more likely today, monitoring your twitter feed!
Actually, I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but it is true that government, like businesses, have found social media irresistible, not just for the amount of data that is available through it, but for a wide variety of positive uses as well.
Let me count the ways (please note the following is not an exhaustive list):
- Police use social media to catch baddies! And pass on informative messages about traffic delays.
- Public information campaigns about important topics, like flags, are distributed through a wide variety of social mediums as well as traditional ones.
- Election campaigns are conducted as much online these days as on soapboxes, and a recent study found that there is a statistically significant relationship between the size of online social networks of candidates and election voting and election results.
- Information and experience is shared within large government bureaucracies using intranets, or wikis.
- Governments can ask questions of the people and get answers, or allow campaigns to drive change, such as change.org.
Ah but the risks
I’ve worked in government organisations, however, at local government and educational levels, and let’s be open about the fact that there are pretty good reasons for governments to be wary of social media, as well. And not just because we’ve seen governments can be toppled by people using social media to drive and coordinate passionate campaigns (the Arab Spring).
Many government organisations hold enormous amounts of private data about citizens – so there are concerns about something being leaked that shouldn’t be. Wikileaks anyone?
There are also huge reputational risks, too. Look at the US Defence Force in hot water as I type for tweeting a replay of the events that led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden in a “live-tweet” fashion.
Seriously, this guy has a whole blog of political social media fails.
So understandably, government organisations have been a lot more risk adverse and slow to adopt social media’s many forms. Therefore, for many organisations it has been used purely as a broadcast mechanism for some time.
Toe dipping
I was involved with a local council when it began using social media in the form of Twitter and then Facebook. The biggest concern was actually the comments – what if someone said something negative? What if someone hijacked the thread and went off on a tirade? What if – gasp – someone swore??
Where businesses tend to hire in social media experts, or assume because the boss uses Facebook themselves they are already experts, government organisations tend to write policies, have meetings, lay out strategies and style guides… and then dip their toes in with bated breath.
Check out the Dunedin City Council Facebook page today. It’s found a happy medium (nothing to do with me, I should add) of positive posts, photos and information messages, and built a steady following of mostly positive “likers”.
I think overall, as social media proves itself not to be a “fad” that “we shouldn’t invest in, as it will undoubtedly fizzle out” (quoting several previous bosses there!), government organisations will continue to find new and better ways to use this more useful communication tool.
Images:
https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-person-suit-united-states-of-america-2281/
earfluff 