Social media policies as responses for social media ...

GOVINF-01167; No. of pages: 12; 4C: Government Information Quarterly xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

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Social media policies as responses for social media affordances: The case of China Qiang Chen a,b,c,⁎, Xiaolin Xu a,b, Bolin Cao c, Wei Zhang a,b a b c

Non-traditional Security Center of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, PR China College of Public Administration, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, PR China Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 2 November 2014 Received in revised form 24 January 2016 Accepted 29 April 2016 Available online xxxx Keywords: Social media Affordance theory Social media policy Social media governance Government 2.0 China

a b s t r a c t The study aims to reveal how government organizations manage governmental social media use by employing policies to respond to the affordances of social media. The existing literature has mainly emphasized social media diffusion, use and their roles in social management. Little explores how government departments manage governmental social media use. The study tries to accomplish the goal by content analyzing seventy-six social media policy documents from Chinese government departments. The results found that Chinese government departments showed distinct strategies toward four affordances of social media. Government departments presented positive perceptions toward editability, but perceived more negative aspects of persistence. Meanwhile, government departments perceived both opportunities and challenges for visibility and interactivity. Moreover, Chinese government departments placed distinct emphasis on policy elements employed to govern the affordances. Overall, Chinese government departments highlighted policy elements such as employee response, account presentation, content vetting, human resources and scopes of content, but paid little attention to policy elements like content accessibility, account termination, rules for citizen commenting, and financial resources. © 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc.

1. Introduction Social media, with the functionalities of information diffusion, relationship development, conversation and connectivity (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011; Stamati, Papadopoulos, & Anagnostopoulos, 2015), have been rapidly penetrating across government organizations (Khan, Yoon, & Park, 2014; Mergel, 2013a, 2013b; Mossberger, Wu, & Crawford, 2013; Snead, 2013; Zavattaro & Sementelli, 2014; Zheng, 2013; Zheng & Zheng, 2014). Social media are “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 61) and “enable stakeholders and government to communicate, collaborate, and engage in governance” (Oliveira & Welch, 2013, p. 397). Social media are remolding public governance, and have generated new opportunities for government-citizen relationship building (Hong, 2013; Kim, Park, & Rho, 2013; Warren, Sulaiman, & Jaafar, 2014), public service provision (Linders, 2012; Nam, 2012; Panagiotopoulos, Bigdeli, & Sams, 2014), public engagement (Bonsón, Royo, & Ratkai, 2015; Ellison & Hardey, 2013; Lee & Kwak, 2012), and government transparency (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010; Bonsón, Torres, Royo, & Flores, 2012). ⁎ Corresponding author at: 430#, College of Public Administration, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Hongshan district, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, PR China. E-mail address: [email protected] (Q. Chen).

However, other than the aforementioned opportunities, governmental social media use may confront a series of challenges, such as deviant behaviors (Picazo-Vela, Gutiérrez-Martínez, & Luna-Reyes, 2012), potential organizational chaos (Mergel, 2012; Mergel & Bretschneider, 2013), criticism of social media monitoring (Bekkers, Edwards, & de Kool, 2013) and reputation damage (Bekkers et al., 2013). In essence, it weakens the government's ability to exert traditional control over information technology initiatives (Schlaeger & Jiang, 2014; Vaast & Kaganer, 2013). Considering the mixed influences of social media use, the competent government bodies might strive to allow certain social media activities but restrict others, emphasizing the necessity of social media governance (Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012; Vaast & Kaganer, 2013). However, most of the existing policies (e.g., e-government policies) are before the advent of social media with failure to consider the new characteristics of social media (Bertot, Jaeger, & Hansen, 2012). These policies might not reflect the changing landscape of social media (Lee & Kwak, 2012). Thus, social media policies become indispensable for social media governance (Mergel & Bretschneider, 2013; Vaast & Kaganer, 2013). Policies are documents that set basic principles for a specific issue (e.g., social media, e-government), aiming to shape corresponding actors' actions and perceptions (Vaast & Kaganer, 2013). Social media policies for government refer to written documents endorsed by the competent government to guide and normalize official use of social media. Social media policies consist of statements, principles,

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.04.008 0740-624X/© 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc.

Please cite this article as: Chen, Q., et al., Social media policies as responses for social media affordances: The case of China, Government Information Quarterly (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.04.008

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Q. Chen et al. / Government Information Quarterly xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

procedures, goals, priorities and directions (Cardenas, 2013). Overall, social media policies are useful to frame objectives and to align social media usage behaviors with the missions, procedures and values of government organizations (Cardenas, 2013). Social media policies play important roles in clarifying objectives and accountability (Criado, Sandoval-Almazan, & Gil-Garcia, 2013), allocating resources and ultimately internalizing social media activities into organizational processes (Mergel & Greeves, 2012). Moreover, they clarify the consequences of unintended effects as well (Yi, Oh, & Kim, 2013). Therefore, social media policies may be the most valuable and prevalent tools for social media governance (Vaast & Kaganer, 2013). The study aims to explore how competent government agencies manage subordinate units' use of social media through social media policies. More specifically, the study employs the affordance approach, which contends that actors respond to social media on the basis of the affordances rather than the materiality of social media (Vaast & Kaganer, 2013), following studies of Vaast and Kaganer (2013) and Stamati et al. (2015). The study thus tries to reveal how government organizations manage governmental social media use by employing policies to respond to the affordances of social media (Stamati et al., 2015; Vaast & Kaganer, 2013) – visibility, persistence, editability, and interactivity – to assure the effectiveness of social media use. In what follows, this paper details the theory of affordance and proposes four affordances of social media in governmental contexts. The study then discusses the elements of social media policies, to align these policy elements with the four affordances. Based on these foundations, the study explores how Chinese government bodies manage governmental social media use by employing social media policies to respond to the four affordances. 2. Background: Affordance theory and policy practice 2.1. Theoretical foundations 2.1.1. Affordance theory and social media affordance James Gibson (1979) first defined the concept of affordance as an ecological psychologist who attempted to explain how species perceive their environments in terms of possible actions. Instead of the material object itself, users perceive the utility of an object. The affordances will vary according to changes of competences and objectives of individual users. Furthermore, the notion of affordance “neither belongs to the environment, nor the individual, but rather to the relationship between individuals and their perceptions of environments” (Parchoma, 2014, p. 361). Affordance theory has been widely applied to better understand the relationships between information technology and social practices (Stamati et al., 2015; Treem & Leonardi, 2012; Zammutto, Griffith, Majchrzak, Dougherty, & Faraj, 2007). It contributes to avoiding the trap of “technological determinism” (Parchoma, 2014) and to explaining the similar or disparate communication and workplace behaviors within the population using the same technology (Treem & Leonardi, 2012). Recent scholarly attention has focused on social media. These studies conclude that although the material features of social media remain stable, affordances are socially constructed (Leonardi & Barley, 2010). Social media affordance refers to latent possibilities for actions that constitute the intersections of users and social media (Cabiddu, Carlo, & Piccoli, 2014). Social media scholars have employed the affordance theory to explore the potentials for action of social media in organizational practices, such as knowledge sharing (Gibbs, Rozaidi, & Eisenberg, 2013; Majchrzak, Faraj, Kane, & Azad, 2013), knowledge creation (Mansour, Askenäs, & Ghazawneh, 2013; Wagner, Vollmar, & Wagner, 2014), intellectual capital production (Kane, Azad, Majchrzak, & Faraj, 2011), external communication (Argyris & Monu, 2015), customer engagement (Cabiddu et al., 2014), activism (Obar, 2014), election campaigns (Dyrby & Jensen, 2012), and government openness (Malsbender, Hofmann, & Becker, 2014; Stamati et al., 2015). To provide

some detail, as pioneers of social media affordance research under organizational contexts, Treem and Leonardi (2012) reviewed previous studies and concluded that social media affordances consisted of four categories: visibility, editability, persistence, and association. The four common affordances of social media exert potential influences on the organizational processes of socialization, knowledge sharing and power (Treem & Leonardi, 2012). Based on this study, Mansour et al. (2013) conducted in-depth interviews at Consolidated Contractors Company and IBM and further confirmed that social media (Wiki) afforded four additional potentials — commenting, accessibility, viewability and validation, other than the preceding four affordances. Later research further examined the particular affordances of social media for knowledge sharing and creation. Majchrzak et al. (2013) theoretically concluded that social media promoted workplace knowledge sharing and conversations by the virtue of four distinct affordances: meta-voicing, triggered attending, network-informed associating, and generative role-taking. However, apart from positive affordances, Gibbs et al. (2013), by interviewing 12 engineers from high-tech companies, found that social media afforded negative action potentials for knowledge sharing. They pointed that the negative affordances of social media involved invisibility, temporary disengagement, and selective control (Gibbs et al., 2013). In addition, scholars have highlighted social media affordances for external communication. The study by Argyris and Monu (2015) is representative. By combining affordance theory and public relations theory, they identified that social media afforded eight action potentials for external communication: presentability, self-expression, monitorability, reach, engagement, connectivity, recordability, and availability. Specific to government organizations, Malsbender et al. (2014) identified by literature analysis six affordances of social media for governmental external interactions, including the four basic affordances identified by Treem and Leonardi (2012) and two affordances (meta-voicing, and generativity) from Majchrzak et al. (2013). Stamati et al. (2015) found social media afforded government openness in five different ways: communicability, interactivity, visibility, collaborative ability, and anonymity. To conclude, social media tools might contribute distinct affordances for different organizations and different organizational practices, except for the fundamental affordances presented by Treem and Leonardi (2012). The existing studies have often employed three methods to detect social media affordances within organizational contexts: literature review (Majchrzak et al., 2013; Malsbender et al., 2014; Treem & Leonardi, 2012), in-depth interview (Cabiddu et al., 2014; Gibbs et al., 2013; Stamati et al., 2015), and survey (Obar, 2014). This study investigates the affordances of social media for governmental practices by conducting a literature review. 2.1.2. Four affordances of social media for governmental practices To extract social media affordances for governmental practices, this paper intensely examined social media affordance studies related to government organizations. The study identified two articles that explored the affordances of social media for governmental openness (Stamati et al., 2015) and service provision (Malsbender et al., 2014). Table 1 presents the results of the two studies. It is feasible to consider social media affordances in Chinese governmental activities by reviewing these two articles, though it is not a perfect approach. Chinese government organizations actually employ social media, especially microblogs, for similar purposes, such as polling online public opinion, predicting citizens' needs and providing public services (Schlaeger & Jiang, 2014). However, the affordances identified by the two studies should be refined due to their similar meanings or potential intersections (Table 1). For instance, both of them contain visibility. In addition, meta-voicing, which emphasizes “the potential of social media to enable users to react to content” (Malsbender et al., 2014, P.13), belongs to the interactivity affordance. The study thus concludes that there are four affordances of social media for governmental practices.



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Table 1 Review of the literature involving social media affordances for governmental practices. Authors

Focus

Method

Malsbender et al. (2014)

Social media for governmental service innovation

Literature analyze the contributions of previous Visibility studies, especially Treem and Leonardi (2012), and Majchrzak et al. (2013) Persistence

Affordance

Interview 10 top executives of private sectors Social media for Greek Stamati, Papadopoulos, and governmental openness and and 5 senior public employees accountability Anagnostopoulos (2015)

Visibility refers to the potential of social media that permits users' actions, emotions and connections to be visible to others (Malsbender et al., 2014; Stamati et al., 2015; Treem & Leonardi, 2012). For governmental practices, social media have the potential to facilitate the diffusion of government information and to enhance governmental transparency (Stamati et al., 2015). Social media enable government organizations to view and visualize citizens' needs as well (Stamati et al., 2015). Persistence denotes that once published on social media, the content (varied information) created is available to other users, although the poster logs out of the social media application (Treem & Leonardi, 2012). In this sense, social media content remains accessible over time in the original form in which the actor has presented it (Malsbender et al., 2014). This fact emphasizes the potential of social media, which enable users to retrieve relevant actions beyond the time boundary (Malsbender et al., 2014). Editablity includes two main features that social media offer (Treem & Leonardi, 2012). Social media users can craft/recraft the content individually before submitted onto the platform (Malsbender et al., 2014). Moreover, further modifications are possible. Interactivity concerns the potential of social media, which enables users to interact with others, such as government-citizen interactions (Stamati et al., 2015). For example, government microblogs allow citizens to comment on governmental activities, such as public service provision and public policy making, while government organizations respond to these comments through microblogs. 2.1.3. From social media affordances to social media policies Social media affordances are not always positive, and may show negative sides as well. Social media researchers have noted the negative aspects of social media affordances for organizational practices (Cabiddu et al., 2014; Gibbs et al., 2013; Majchrzak et al., 2013; Obar, 2014), although most emphasize positive aspects (Argyris & Monu, 2015; Cabiddu et al., 2014; Kane et al., 2011; Malsbender et al., 2014; Stamati et al., 2015; Wagner et al., 2014). For example, Cabiddu et al. (2014) proved that persistent engagement affordance, to some extent, might lead to organizational paralysis due to persistent negativity, the

Definition

The potential of social media which enables users' actions, emotions and connections to be visible to others The potential of social media which enables users to retrieve relevant actions beyond the time boundary Editability The potential of social media which enables users to craft and recraft their communicative actions freely before presented to others Association The ability of social media which enables users to establish connection among individual, organizations and actions Metavoicing The potential of social media to enable users to react to content (p. 13) Generativity The potential of social media which enable users to engage and innovate by expressing ideas and experiences of public service. Communicability The potential of social media which enables users to communicate with each other with common languages and syntaxes Interactivity The potential of social media which enables users to interact with others (especially government-citizen interaction). Visibility The potential of social media to visualize governmental work and citizens' needs. Collaboration The potential of social media to promote government-citizen collaboration that can improve decision making Anonymity The potential of social media which enable citizens to express their opinion anonymously.

lack of controls over content, and the lack of tested principles (Cabiddu et al., 2014). For knowledge sharing, the meta-voicing affordance might inhibit the productivity of conversations about knowledge due to inaccurate and biased information (Majchrzak et al., 2013). The association affordance might harm the productivity of knowledge conversations due to preferential attachment (Majchrzak et al., 2013). Studies show that the benefits of social media affordances for open government innovation will be discounted if additional resources are not accessible (Malsbender et al., 2014). Therefore, social media policies are necessary in the process of dealing with affordances of social media for government (Vaast & Kaganer, 2013). Previous studies showed considerable growth in the impact of social media use in the workplace (Charoensukmongkol, 2014; El Ouirdi, El Ouirdi, Segers, & Henderickx, 2015; Leftheriotis & Giannakos, 2014; Moqbel, Nevo, & Kock, 2013; Oliveira & Welch, 2013; Parveen, Jaafar, & Ainin, 2015). However, issues regarding how organizations respond to their subordinates' use of social media have still been underestimated (Vaast & Kaganer, 2013). It is not clear which tactics organizations employ to regulate negative aspects of social media affordances and to promote positive aspects (Vaast & Kaganer, 2013). Moreover, preexisting IT governance mechanisms may fail due to ignoring the emerging characteristics of social media (Bertot et al., 2012). Therefore, considering the prominence of the topic in both theory and practice, it would be meaningful to discover how government organizations conduct social media governance through social media policies. To answer these questions, this paper next identifies the major elements of social media policies to align them with the four affordances of social media. In this manner, this study may explore how social media policies respond to the four affordances of social media. 2.2. Social media policies for government 2.2.1. The elements of social media policies for government Government departments create social media policies for multiple goals, e.g., social inclusion and good governance (Bertot et al., 2012). Table 2 lists the academic literature involving elements of social media policy and their findings. Among them, the study from Hrdinová et al.


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Table 2 Review of the literature involving elements of social media policy. Studies

Data and method

Findings

Hrdinová, Helbig, and Peters (2010)

Interviewing 32 government professionals and content analyzing 26 policies around the world

Tariq Banday and M. Mattoo (2013)

Case study

Mergel and Greeves (2012)

Interviews with social media directors and IT professionals from federal and local government agencies

The Bureau of Justice Assistance (2013)

Case study of U.S. police and justice department

Zimmer (2012)

Survey data collected from 81 cities of California

NASCIO (2013)

Contently analyze 31 state social media policies of U.S.

Employee access; account management; content management; acceptable use; employee conduct; citizen conduct; security concerns; legal issues Legible objectives; platform selection; governance system (e.g. Resources, responsiveness, security); modes of communication; pilot creation; engagement improvement; institutionalization Organizational responsibility; uniform brands; acceptable channels; content approval; content accessibility; language style; record preservation; online comments; online netiquette Compatibility with other policies; authorized use; information evaluation; information archiving; procedures of dissemination; purposes of use Purposes; social media definition and monitoring; employee behaviors; content management; authorized use; record retention; citizen conduct Demands evaluation; acceptable use; organization concerns; policy scope; principles of interaction, records management; relation to current policies; employee training

(2010) has been widely cited. By interviewing 32 government professionals and analyzing the content of 26 publicly available policies from around the world, Hrdinová et al. (2010) found that social media policies usually contained eight common elements: employee access, account management, content management, acceptable use, employee conduct, citizen conduct, security concerns and legal issues. The framework has been employed by other studies. For example, through the framework, scholars developed elementary guidelines for Indian government's use of social media (Tariq Banday & M. Mattoo, 2013). They contended that the guideline should include seven aspects, such as legible objectives, platform selection, governance system (e.g., resources, responsiveness, security and content), communication modes, pilot creation, engagement improvement and institutionalization. Although useful, the boundaries among the eight elements are ambiguous. The employee access dimension, which emphasizes who can use social media, overlaps with the employee conduct dimension. Moreover, the employee conduct and content management dimensions might both involve appropriate and inappropriate behaviors of information provision. Thus, the categorizations require further elaboration. To identify contents of social media policies, Mergel and Greeves (2012) conducted a series of exploratory interviews with social media directors and IT professionals from both federal and local government agencies. The results suggested that social media policies consisted of contents like organizational responsibility, uniform brands, acceptable channels, content approval, content accessibility, language style, record preservation and public information collection, rules for online comments, and online etiquette. The classification further detailed the elements of social media policies and identified some new components, such as organizational responsibility and rules for online netiquette,

compared with the work of Hrdinová et al. (2010). However, the classification has its limitations as well. For example, content approval and language style both related to content management. A report released by the Bureau of Justice Assistance suggested that social media policies should deal with the following issues: compatibility with other laws and policies, authorized use, information evaluation, information archiving, procedures of dissemination, and purposes of use (The Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2013). Regarding social media policies at state level, Zimmer (2012) analyzed the survey data from 81 cities in California and found that most policy documents sought to clarify four aspects of social media use: goals (90%), employee behaviors (79%), social media definitions (79%) and content management (76%). In contrast, record retention (59%), social media monitoring (55%) and citizen conduct (55%) were mentioned less often. In 2013, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) in America examined thirty-one state policies and identified that confidentiality (84%), ethical conduct (74%), security and privacy (65%), personal use (55%), public commenting (45%) and transparency (39%) were the most frequently mentioned elements (NASCIO, 2013). The report further concluded that policies should address the following: demand evaluation, acceptable use, organizational concerns, policy scope, principles of interaction, record management, relationships with current policies, and employee training. 2.2.2. Refining the elements of social media policy Although the elements of social media policies vary among different studies, some first-order dimensions can be identified: account management (Hrdinová et al., 2010; Mergel & Greeves, 2012), content management (Mergel & Greeves, 2012; The Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2013; Zimmer, 2012), resource arrangement (NASCIO, 2013), employee conduct (Mergel & Greeves, 2012; Zimmer, 2012), citizen conduct (Mergel & Greeves, 2012; Zimmer, 2012), and security concerns (Hrdinová et al., 2010). For this study, it incorporated employee conduct and citizen conduct into one dimension based on the following: 1) the employee conduct dimension broadly consists of information distribution and collection, comment responding, and other behaviors. To avoid overlap with other dimensions (e.g., content management and security concerns), we thus should narrow down the definition of employee conduct to comment responding. 2) Citizen conduct usually serves as the counterpart to employee conduct in social media-based government–citizen interaction. Therefore, this study integrates the two elements into a new one — the interaction conduct element, which emphasizes the rules that both employees and citizens should obey during interactions. Moreover, this study considers performance evaluation as one of the first-order policy elements, which was few discussed by the existing studies. Performance evaluation usually involves quantitative and qualitative metrics that measure the effects of social media use. Based on Mergel (2013c), the effects are important parts of the social media implementation cycle. Performance evaluation can accurately provide information about these effects. Performance evaluation contributes to grasping the needs of citizens and manifesting the value of social media and then mobilizing organizational actors to engage in it actively (Mergel, 2012). To summarize, this study contends that the first-order dimensions of social media policies for government consist of account management, content management, resource arrangement, online interaction, security concerns, and performance evaluation. This study further develops the second-order dimensions of the abovementioned six dimensions by evaluating existing studies. Account management consists of three second-order dimensions: account registry, account presentation and account termination (Hrdinová et al., 2010; Mergel & Greeves, 2012). Content management is principally composed of six second-order aspects: content sources, scope of the content, content vetting, style of the content, content accessibility and content archiving (Bertot et al., 2012; Mergel & Greeves, 2012). Resource arrangement encompasses



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two second-order aspects, named financial resources and human resources, respectively (Kavanaugh et al., 2012; Lee & Kwak, 2012; Zheng, 2013). Online interaction includes two second-order units: rules for employee responsiveness and rules for citizen comments (Hrdinová et al., 2010; Mergel & Greeves, 2012). Security concern has three second-order elements: technological security, behavioral security and privacy security (Hrdinová et al., 2010; Yi et al., 2013). However, considering that behavioral security (e.g., information leaking) and privacy security (citizens' privacy) might intersect with content scopes (what to post and what not to post), this study removed them from security concerns. Therefore, security concerns consist only of technological security. Performance evaluation includes evaluators, content evaluation, and relevant consequences (Mergel, 2012). 3. Method

Fig. 1. The quantity of government microblogs on Sina weibo. Sources: Sina Government Microblog Reports Ranging from 2011 to 2015, by Office of Public Opinion Watch.

3.1. Research context Despite experiencing rapid economic growth, the Chinese society still faces numerous challenges, such as social inequality and official corruption (Sullivan, 2014). Social problems sometimes upset citizens. However, limited offline channels are available for Chinese citizens to express their discontentment due to the Chinese authoritarian system (Chan, Wu, Hao, Xi, & Jin, 2012; Tong & Lei, 2013). Nevertheless, this reality has made the introduction and popularity of local social media quite valuable as a new approach for expression (Schlaeger & Jiang, 2014). Social media have empowered ordinary citizens. With microblogs, Chinese citizens actively participate in incidents (especially incidents involving public interest) by presenting them on their microblogs and making these topics salient by drawing online opinion leaders and mass media into the circle (Tong & Lei, 2013). Microblogs exponentially spread information through reposting (Tong & Lei, 2013). Chinese citizens, including marginalized populations, have thus been extensively embedded into social media platforms to make their voices and appeals heard (Svensson, 2014; Yang, 2014). There are more than 200 million microblog users among Chinese citizens, and more than 160 million citizens are using microblog mobile apps (China Internet Network Information Center, 2015). All these citizens enhance their influences through various methods, including Internetbased (e.g., microblog) engagement and online activism (Hassid, 2012; King, Pan, & Roberts, 2013; Yang, 2014). In this way, they might challenge the hegemony of the Chinese regime through the power of a tactic of ‘surround and watch’ (Noesselt, 2014; Tong & Lei, 2013). To keep up with the fashion and to increase legitimacy, Chinese government organizations have enthusiastically employed local social media tools, especially two most popular microblog platforms (Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo) to promote their administrative processes since 2009, with the encouragement from the Central Propaganda Department of ‘occupying microblogs’ (Schlaeger & Jiang, 2014). The microblog accounts owned by Chinese government bodies are labeled as ‘government microblogs’ as well (Ma, 2013; Schlaeger & Jiang, 2014). The first two accounts of government microblogs were from Yunnan and Hunan provinces (Schlaeger & Jiang, 2014). The data shows (Fig. 1) that the total quantity of government microblogs on Sina Weibo rapidly increased from 312 in October 2010 to 84,377 in June 2014. On Tencent Weibo, 111,728 government agencies and departments were operating official accounts as of June 2014. By the end of 2014, the quantity of official microblogs on the two platforms surpassed 277,000 (Xinhuanet, 2014). Chinese government organizations have used these official microblogs for various goals, ranging from public opinion monitoring to public service provisions (Schlaeger & Jiang, 2014; Sullivan, 2014). Nevertheless, government microblogs, as a governmental innovation, have caused many new problems. Most of the contents on the government microblogs are trivial and outdated information (Zheng, 2013). Much of the published information is of poor quality, e.g., in rigid and inconsistent styles (Zheng, 2013). More importantly, most

Chinese government bodies only use official microblogs for organizational outreach rather than for responsiveness (Zheng & Zheng, 2014). Without the necessary resources, they always hesitate to exert greater efforts in official microblogs (Schlaeger & Jiang, 2014). Many government microblogs, called ‘zombie microblogs’, even stop updating their content after short active periods (Zheng, 2013). Chinese government organizations thus receive a great deal of criticism online because of these inappropriate behaviors (Zheng, 2013). Therefore, institutionalizing government microblog use gradually increases its salience among Chinese government organizations (Schlaeger & Jiang, 2014; Zheng, 2013). Practically, by comprehensively scanning government Web sites, this study found that Chinese government agencies have attempted to enact social media policies for government microblogs since 2011. Nevertheless, existing academic literatures about Chinese government microblogs mainly emphasizes their diffusion (Ma, 2012, 2013), use (Zheng & Zheng, 2014) and roles in social management (Schlaeger & Jiang, 2014). In other words, the literature scantly explores how Chinese government organizations manage governmental social media use through social media policies. As an important part of global governmental social media practices, Chinese experiences of social media governance are beneficial to other countries as well. In summary, our study shows its significance by investigating how Chinese governments use social media policies to respond to affordances of social media and to improve the management of government microblogs.

3.2. Data collection Social media policies are documents that aim to guide and normalize governmental use of social media and that are written and endorsed by government bodies. This study collected policy documents regarding government microblogs by online searching. This study retrieved these documents by entering key words including ‘regulation’ and ‘government microblog’, ‘rule’ and ‘government microblog’, ‘procedure’ and ‘government microblog’, ‘norm’ and ‘government microblog’ into the search engines Google (globally-based) and Baidu (locally-based). The study then selected documents based on three requirements: 1) the documents should be endorsed by government agencies; 2) the documents aim to normalize governmental use of social media; and 3) the documents are complete and available. Eventually, this study collected 76 policy documents. The lists of government departments are in Table 3. Among the 76 documents, only three were established in 2011. Most of them were enacted between 2012 (15/76) and 2013 (50/76). The remaining (8/76) were established in 2014. More than half of the documents (41/76) were created by municipal government, 17% (13/76) by provincial government, 11% (8/76) by district government, 7% (5/76) by county government, and 1% (1/76) by central


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government. The rest were created by other government agencies, such as autonomous prefectures.

Table 3 List of sampled policies. Name of government organizations

Level

Time

Administrative Service Center of Hangzhou City Administrative Service Center of Yibing City Agriculture Commission of Wuxi City Bureau of Education of Yongqiao District Bureau of GCAA of hangning District Bureau of Statistics of Anhui province Bureau of SMG of Jilin Province Bureau of Agriculture of Baoji City Bureau of Agriculture of Kunming City Bureau of Industry and Commerce of Jinzhong City Bureau of Industry and Commerce of Qingdao City Bureau of Commerce of Mianzhu City Bureau of HURD of Bayingol Mongolian Bureau of HURD of Dujiangyan City Bureau of HURD of Lishui City Bureau of HRSS of Baoji City Bureau of HRSS of Maanshan City Bureau of Industry and Commerce of Tonghua City Bureau of Industry and Commerce of Yinchuan City Bureau of IIT of Shijiazhuang City Bureau of Public Safety of Binzhou City Bureau of Transport of Dujiangyan City Bureau of Work Safety of Linyi City Bureau of Work Safety of Xiangyang City Bureau of Economic and Information Technology of Haishu Bureau of Food and Drug of Xinjiang Bureau of justice of Wujiang district Bureau of Meteorological Service of Nanning City Bureau of Quality and Technology Supervision of Suqian Bureau of Quality and Technology Supervision of Xinjiang Bureau of Urban Planning of Nanjing City Bureau of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry of Hohhot Bureau of CALE of Taizhou Bureau of CALE of Urumqi Bureau of City Administration of Qingyuan City Bureau of Cultural Heritage of Shanxi Province Bureau of Education of Jinan City Bureau of Education of Minxing district Bureau of Education of Nanchang City Bureau of Earthquake of Shanxi Province Bureau of Justice of Guangan City Bureau of Landscape and Forestry of Nanchang City Bureau of Maritime Safety of Jiaxing City Bureau of PPRFT of Shanxi Province Bureau of Public Security of Hinggan League Bureau of Public Utility Administration of Quanzhou Bureau of statistics of Hengyang City Committee of the CPPCC of Qujing City Department of Commerce of Jiangsu Province Department of Environmental Protection of Jiangxi Department of Environmental Protection of Sichuan Department of Water Resource of Jiangxi Province Development and Reform Commission of Bortala Mongol Dongxihu District Government Government of Kuitun City Government of Bortala Mongol Government of Bozhou City Government of Jiamusi City Government of Meizhou City Government of Nanchang City Government of Quanjiao County Government of Shangluo City Government of Shangnan County Government of Shenzhen City Government of Suichuan County Government of Tianquan County Government of Tongren City Government of Weinan City Government of Xinhe County Government Of Yaan City Government of Xinjiang province Jinfeng District Government People's Congress of Guangzhou City Shizishan District Government State Administration of Work Safety of China The people's Procuratorate of Hubei

Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level District level District level Provincial level Provincial level Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level Others Others Others Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level Others Municipal level Municipal level District level Provincial level District level Municipal level Municipal level Provincial level Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level Provincial level Municipal level District level Municipal level Provincial level Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level Provincial level Others Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level Provincial level Provincial level Provincial level Provincial level Others District level Others Others Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level Municipal level County-level Municipal level County-level Municipal level County-level County-level Municipal level Municipal level County-level Municipal level Provincial level District level Municipal level District level Central level Provincial level

2011 2012 2012 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2012 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2014 2014 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2011 2013 2013 2012 2013 2013 2013 2013 2012 2013 2013 2012 2012 2013 2012 2013 2013 2012 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2012 2013 2013 2013 2014 2014 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2011 2014 2013 2013 2012 2014 2012 2014 2012 2012 2014 2012

3.3. Data processing This study aimed to explore how Chinese government organizations endeavored to manage government microblog use by responding to social media affordances with social media policies. The study employed content analysis to accomplish these goals. Content analysis is useful for detecting message characteristics and for illustrating “what they mean to people, what they enable or prevent, and what the information conveyed by them does” (Krippendorff, 2012, p. 2). The method has been widely applied in policy analysis (Jewell & Bero, 2006; Menon, 2011; Siddiki, Carboni, Koski, & Sadiq, 2015; Yang & Mueller, 2014). This study developed a code manual by comprehensively examining the existing frameworks of social media policy analysis. In the preceding text, the study concluded that social media policies for government included six first-order elements, which consisted of 17 second-order dimensions. To detail government's responses to social media affordances, this study employed the second-order dimensions as the codes, except for performance evaluation, because the secondorder dimensions of performance evaluation may not provide additional information when applied to explore the research question. Finally, this paper incorporated 15 codes into the code manual (Table 4). The coding unit was a block of text between a sentence and a paragraph (Vaast & Kaganer, 2013). The study trained two independent coders for approximately 25 h to agree on the codes. To ensure the reliability of the content analysis, this study randomly chose approximately 39% (30) of the total sample for the two coders, and they independently conducted the work based on the code manual. The study evaluated inter-coder reliability through Holsti's formula (Holsti, 1969): R ¼ N average agreement = 1 þ fðN − 1Þ ðaverge agreementÞg: The results showed that the reliability of all codes was above 0.94, which suggested the codes were well established. Next, this study aligned the fifteen policy elements to social media affordances, following the methods of Vaast and Kaganer (2013). The study employed the iterative interpretive method to inspect these elements and their empirical presentations, and connected them with different aspects of social media affordances (Vaast & Kaganer, 2013). In accordance with the results of Vaast and Kaganer (2013), this study noted that some policy elements involved two or more affordances as well. Table 5 presents the results. 4. Research findings 4.1. Responsiveness toward visibility Visibility contributes to enhancing governmental transparency and visualizing citizens' views and needs. Table 5 illustrates that policy documents encourage all units to exploit the benefits of visibility. Policy elements, including content sources (100%, 76/76), account presentation (100%, 76/76), and content scope (100%, 76/76), were commonly mentioned. Few policy documents (7%, 5/76) noted the potential digital divide and incorporated content accessibility element into the documents. They proposed establishing an interactive Notes to Table 3: For the Column of ‘Level’, others refer to the levels of government organizations are autonomous prefecture, or between county-level and municipal level. CPCC — the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference; HURD — Housing and Urban–Rural Development; GCAA — Greening and City Appearance Administration; SMG — Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation; HRSS — Human Resources and Social Security; CALE — City Administration and Law Enforcement; PPRFT — Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television; IIT — Industry and Information Technology.


Q. Chen et al. / Government Information Quarterly xxx (2016) xxx–xxx Table 4 Coding manual of the study. Codes

Definitions

Table 4 (continued) Codes Examples

“All levels of government agencies and departments should be authorized by the information office of the municipality before they create government microblog accounts on social media platforms such as Tencent weibo, Sina weibo, and Xinhua weibo”. [Government of Nanchang City] Rules about how to present the “In principle, the title of Account government microblogs should presentation accounts to citizens, e.g., logo embody the functions of (79%, 60/76) and slogan of accounts government departments, (Hrdinová et al., 2010; Mergel labeled as ‘XX county’ or ‘XX & Greeves, 2012). district’. All levels of government departments should choose images that reflect organizational functions and culture as the logo of government microblogs. When filling in the part ‘user profile’, the department should provide information referring to organizational function, faith, goals and contacts”. [Government Of Yaan City] Regulations about the time and “It is acceptable to shut down Account government microblog. But the termination procedures for account cancel action should be approved by the (Hrdinová et al., 2010; Mergel (9%, 7/76) department head. Then, the & Greeves, 2012). actors forward their application to the information office of the municipality. The office will terminate government microblog based on the application”. [Government of Shangluo City] Original sources of the contents “Administration Office of the Content Bureau is responsible for of governmental social media sources (Hrdinová et al., 2010; NASCIO, government microblog (100%, information provisions, such as 2013; The Bureau of Justice 76/76) activities and conferences of Assistance, 2013) superior agencies, and government affairs of the Bureau. Other departments of the Bureau and its subordinates are responsible for providing their work information, e.g. related government announcements, government documents and government conferences”. [Bureau of City Administration of Qingyuan City] “All units can contribute Content scope The content that is allowed to following information to their push and not allowed to push (100%, government microblogs: 1) daily (Hrdinová et al., 2010; Tariq 76/76) work, major policy making and Banday & M. Mattoo, 2013). major projects; 2) mendacious information and reports that require clarifications; 4) appeals, inquiries and suggestions pushed by online citizens; 5) public information that may affect citizens' life; 6) major affairs that need citizen participation; 7) others that require delivery, response or reposting. Following information is prohibited to government microblogs, such as information that violates constitution, information that jeopardizes national security and leaks state secrets”. [Government of Meizhou City] Account registry (100%, 76/76)

Rules about who are authorized and the specific registration procedures (Hrdinová et al., 2010; Mergel & Greeves, 2012).

7

Definitions

Examples

“The office of the department formulates the procedures of content approval. Common information should be approved by the office. Major public policy and information should be signed by department head in charge. Information related to emergencies and sensitive information should be signed by major department head”. [Department of Water Resource of Jiangxi Province] Content style The structure, rhetoric, format “The content should be concise (80%, 61/76) and dictions of content, and all departments are e.g., official vs. plain language, encouraged to organize information with images, texts and text, video or image and internet catchphrase. All (Mergel & Greeves, 2012). units should write microblogs with plain language rather than rigid style”. [Shizishan District Government] “Legislative affairs commission How to assure the content on Content should establish the interacting accessibility the accounts are accessible to mechanism between official individuals who don't use the (7%, 5/76) microblog and official website. platforms (Bertot et al., 2012; Information pushed on the Mergel & Greeves, 2012). official microblog such as legislative proposals and draft regulations, should be available on the official websites”. [People's Congress of Guangzhou City] “All units should clarify the Rules about preserving the Content types of government microblog contents that generated from archiving materials that must be (36%, 27/76) the interactions (Bertot et al., archived, such as materials 2012; Zimmer, 2012). generated from the process of responding to citizens' appeals, inquiries and suggestions”. [Bureau of Quality & Technology Supervision of Xinjiang] Fund provisions (Zheng, 2013). “All units should add the Financial expenditure of government resources microblog operation into (11%, 8/76) annual budget”. [Government of Shenzhen City] The necessary human resources “Government microblog office Human for account operation, e.g. resources of the Bureau should assign two (99%, 75/76) employee arrangement, exclusive employees for employee training (Kavanaugh managing government microblog. All related et al., 2012; NASCIO, 2013). departments and subordinates should assign one part-time employee for microblog information exchange and take charge of the work that allocated by government microblog office”. [Bureau of Industry and Commerce of Tonghua City] Rules about how to respond to “All units should respond to the Employee common questions proposed by citizens' comments (Hrdinová response (95%, 72/76) et al., 2010; Mergel & Greeves, citizen through official microblog in 24 h. Other topics such as 2012; NASCIO, 2013). inquires, appeals, complaints and whistle-blowing, should be reviewed and signed by the leader in charge, and then distribute to related departments. Moreover, they should give responses in five days”. [Bureau of Public Safety of Binzhou City] Content Rules about content approval vetting before pushing (Mergel & (97%, 74/76) Greeves, 2012; The Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2013).

(continued on next page)


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Table 4 (continued) Codes

Definitions

Examples

Citizen Rules that citizens should commenting uphold when they comment (16%, 12/76) the contents of official social media (Hrdinová et al., 2010; Mergel & Greeves, 2012; NASCIO, 2013). Technological Regulation to address technology-based security security (55%, 42/76) issues, e.g., identity stolen, malware, password security and virus scans (Hrdinová et al., 2010; NASCIO, 2013)

Citizen's online comments will be removed if the content refers to topics such as encouraging illegal activity (Hrdinová et al., 2010).

“The username and password of government microblog should be held by leaders in charge and related responsible persons, respectively. The password should be updated periodically”. [Bureau of Meteorological Service of Nanning City] “The work of government Quantitative and qualitative Performance microblogs will be incorporated metrics to measure the effects evaluation into annual appraisal (78%, 59/76) of governmental social media conducted by the Bureau. The use, involving evaluators, units that had been circulated a content evaluation, and relevant consequences (Mergel, notice of criticism will get a low score”. [Bureau of Industry and 2012, 2013c). Commerce of Jinzhong City]

mechanism for government Web sites and microblogs, in turn making information on government microblogs more visible to nonmicroblog users. The legislative affairs commission should establish an interactive mechanism between official microblogs and official Web sites. Information published on the official microblogs, such as legislative proposals and draft regulations, should be available on the official Web sites. [People's Congress of Guangzhou City] To ensure acceptable visibility, 97% of policy documents list the content vetting element, which emphasizes that the content should be authorized and approved before presented on government microblogs. The competent departments realize the importance of resources for visibility, and they include the human resources element (99%, 75/76) in policy documents, although few mention the financial resources element (11%, 8/76). Policy documents also adopt the performance

Table 5 Policy-based governance for social media affordances. Social media affordances

Policy elements for governance

Visibility

Account presentation (100%, 76/76) Content accessibility (7%, 5/76) Content vetting (97%, 74/76) Content scope (100%, 76/76) Content sources (100%, 76/76) Financial resources (11%, 8/76) Human resources (99%, 75/76) Performance evaluation (78%, 59/76) Account termination (9%, 7/76) Content vetting (97%, 74/76) Content scope (100%, 76/76) Content style (80%, 61/76) Content vetting (97%, 74/76) Content vetting (97%, 74/76) Content archiving (36%, 27/76) Employee response (95%, 72/76) Citizen commenting (16%, 12/76) Financial resources (11%, 8/76) Human resources (99%, 75/76) Performance evaluation (78%, 59/76)

Persistence

Editability Interactivity

evaluation element (78%, 59/76) to enable government agencies to use the social media affordance permanently. All units should submit 8 messages per month for the government microblog of the bureau. The units will be rewarded 40 RMB if they accomplish this goal. Hereafter, each additional message will be rewarded an additional 5 RMB. [Bureau of City Administration of Qingyuan City] 4.2. Responsiveness toward editability Editability signifies that government agencies are free to craft and recraft the information that they plan to publish on government microblogs. Table 5 shows that two policy elements, content style (80%, 61/76) and content vetting (97%, 74/76), are popular among policy documents. This indicates that government organizations exert the positive effects of editability. Ninety-seven percent of policy documents employ the content style element to drive relevant departments to edit their content with multiple styles, including text, video, image, and Web site links. The content style element also supports all units in creating contents with Internet catchphrases and plain language. Moreover, government departments recognize that editability facilitates content vetting. Almost all policy documents emphasize that all content should undergo multilayered checks. All units should create concise, popular language and Internet catchphrases. Each message should simultaneously contain text and pictures. [Bureau of City Administration and Law Enforcement of Taizhou]

4.3. Responsiveness toward persistence Persistence, as one of the social media affordances, emphasizes those social media content remains accessible over time in the original form. Although it might enable government organizations to predict citizens' needs, most agencies focus on the negative aspects. The results (Table 5) show that Chinese social media policies for government commonly note two elements: content vetting (97%, 74/76), and content scope (100%, 76/76). Although rarely mentioned (9%, 7/76), another element, account termination, is also employed to prevent potential risks of persistence. To avoid reputation loss from inappropriate information broadcasting, all policy documents define what (not) to post, through the content scope element. Overall, the competent departments contend that government microblogs can deliver three types of information: public information (e.g., daily government affairs, emergency information), information related to citizen engagement (e.g., responding to citizens' appeal, complaints), and information for clarifying rumors. In contrast, ‘alternative’ political information (e.g., content that contradicts with the current laws and policies) and information that jeopardizes social harmony (e.g., rumors, unlawful rallies and demonstrations) are banned. The subsequent quote provides justifications. “All units can contribute the following information to their government microblogs: 1) daily work, major policy making and major projects; 2) emergency information; 3) focal and difficult issues that concern online citizens; 4) clarifications of false information; 5) response to citizens' appeals; 6) public information; 7) major affairs that require citizen participation; 8) other information. Information that violates the constitution, information that jeopardizes national security and leaks state secrets, information about unauthorized public policy, information that defames others, information that violates religious policy and rumors are prohibited. [Government of Nanchang City] At the same time, policy documents emphasize the importance of content vetting (97%, 74/76). All information should be checked and



authorized by distinct persons in charge, according to the types of information. To respond to the affordance, some policy documents (9%, 7/76) even allow their units to terminate government microblogs if needed. “The office of the department formulates the procedures of content approval. Common information should be approved by the office. Major public policies and information should be signed by the department head in charge. Information related to emergencies and sensitive information should be signed by major department head”. [Department of Water Resource of Jiangxi Province]

4.4. Responsiveness toward interactivity Table 5 shows that Chinese government organizations have endeavored to utilize positive aspects of the interactivity affordance of social media by emphasizing several policy elements. The elements include content vetting (97%, 74/76), employee response (95%, 72/76), human resources (99%, 75/76), performance evaluation (78%, 59/76), content archiving (36%, 27/76), citizen commenting (16%, 12/76), and financial resources (11%, 8/76). Furthermore, three policy elements are widely employed to promote the effects of interactivity: content vetting, human resources, and employee response. To foster citizens' engagement in government microblogs, almost all documents emphasize that responsible government agencies and employees should respond in a timely and proper manner to citizens' comments, appeals, complaints, and suggestions. A series of basic tactics were identified, based on the employee response element involved in the policy documents. These tactics involve 1) keeping close watch on the comments on their government microblogs; 2) classifying the comments into different clusters according to relevant criteria; 3) stipulating the speed of response in accordance with the classifications; and 4) clarifying the responsible actors for responses. Business consultations pertaining to policy interpretation must be replied to within 1 working day. Suggestions and complaints must be replied to within 7 working days. For issues requiring considerable efforts of multiple departments, the response is expected to be provided within 15 working days. [Bureau of Industry and Commerce of Jinzhong City] In case of irrelevant and inconsistent responses, the content vetting element (97%, 74/76) is widely mentioned in policy documents. It places emphasis on the approval before answering online messages, especially regarding sensitive topics. The following quote suggests that the content for response requires double-checking. One third of the competent departments (36%, 27/76) recognize the necessity of recording the process and considers content archiving to be one of the policy elements. Responses to online messages should obey the following procedures: a) the staff in the office of the government microblog receives online inquiries; b) relevant departments conceive the response, c) the directors of these departments check the content; d) the director of government microblog office rechecks the content; and e) the staff of the government microblog office publishes the response on social media. [Bureau of Industry and Commerce of Tonghua City] The competent department concerns the sustainability of responses as well. Ninety-nine percent of the documents present the human resource element, which emphasizes that the corresponding agencies should provide ample human resources, e.g., offering additional employees and necessary training. In addition, most policy documents (78%, 59/76) list the performance evaluation element

9

and state that response-related work will be incorporated into the annual appraisal. The executive units need to establish training plans for governmental microblog operation for Weibo staff. This plan aims to strengthen awareness of confidentiality, communicative skills, writing ability, and other professional skills of the staff. Each unit should organize a staff for government microblogs to participate in varied training and exchange programs. [Government of Jiamusi City] Few documents (16%, 12/76) involve the codes of conduct for citizens' online comments. Only a small amount of indirect evidence can be identified regarding the citizen commenting element. The following quote indicates that offensive and injurious comments will be removed. It implies that citizens are not allowed to publish such contents on the government microblogs. Additionally, most government organizations (11%, 8/76) seem to avoid mentioning funds for responses, indicating a reluctance to make expenditures. All units should delete on a timely basis those aggressive and inflammatory comments generated by netizens. All units should record their actions and report to relevant leaders. [Department of Water Resource of Jiangxi Province]

5. Discussion and conclusion 5.1. Discussion The present study aims to delineate Chinese governmental efforts toward managing the governmental use of social media. Further, the study investigates how government organizations accomplish these goals by employing social media policies to respond to social media affordances. The study identified fifteen aspects of social media policies and four affordances of social media for government practices. More importantly, we employed an iterative interpretive method to detect the affordances and the aspects of the affordances that these policy elements emphasized. Overall, government organizations show distinct tactics toward the four affordances of social media. The results suggest that government agencies present more positive perceptions toward editability than toward other affordances. They proactively permit relevant units to diversify the forms of information, and they urge them to craft information for government microblogs by simultaneously using text, videos, pictures and Web site links. Moreover, government departments recognize that editability, as an affordance, offers them sufficient space to vet messages that will be published on government microblogs. In contrast, the competent departments perceive more negative aspects of persistence, another affordance of social media. Considering social media tools to be functional in recording content on the platform and keeping the contents accessible over time, all policy documents regulate information delivery through the content scope element and emphasize what not to post. Almost all policy documents highlight that all content for government microblogs should be authorized and approved. Interestingly, some government agencies even allow relevant units to terminate their government microblogs. These results are consistent with the study of Vaast and Kaganer (2013), which found that government organizations are inclined to portray social media affordances as sources of risks and to utilize social media policies to avoid these risks. With regard to visibility and interactivity, the other two affordances, government agencies are prone to perceiving both opportunities and challenges. Regarding visibility, policy documents encourage government agencies to use this affordance to enhance transparency. Government agencies are encouraged to publish various types of content on government microblogs, such as government affairs information


10


and other public information. Previous studies have also confirmed that government organizations widely and fully exert the information dissemination function of social media, also known as the ‘push strategy’ (Mergel, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c; Mossberger et al., 2013; Zheng & Zheng, 2014). Meanwhile, a few competent departments have been aware of the limitations of visibility and have included the content accessibility element in policy documents. Furthermore, social media enhance government's visibility to some citizens but decrease it to others. If not addressed well, non-microblog users are very likely unable to access content on government microblogs. In fact, the literature has revealed that there are potential tensions between visibility and invisibility when using social media for organizational practices (Gibbs et al., 2013). In addition, the competent departments worry about the sustainability of visibility. Studies have also discovered that government microblogs tend to be abandoned due to lack of funds and human resources (Picazo-Vela et al., 2012; Zheng, 2013). Therefore, almost all policy documents have clarified that all units should provide the necessary employees and training. To ensure informational timeliness and diversity, policy documents consider information provision to be one of the measurements for performance evaluation. However, policy documents seldom emphasize that the units should provide related expenditures for visibility. This gap might be partly attributed to the complexity and sensitivity of the issue involved. Financial issues within government agencies usually require extensive cross-department and cross-level coordination (Zheng, 2013). Regarding interactivity, government organizations realize that it facilitates citizen engagement. Most policy documents emphasize the employee response element, which denotes that all units and relevant employees should respond to citizens' online messages earnestly and timely. To satisfy citizens, policy documents even provide detailed instructions about when and how to respond (e.g., deadlines, tactics, and response procedures, etc.). These detailed instructions indicate that Chinese government organizations consider government microblogs as indispensable platforms for citizens' opinion expression. It seems that the popularity of responsiveness in Chinese policy documents (95%, 72) is higher than in US social media policy documents, compared to the study by Zimmer (2012), which showed that only 55% of documents (approximately 21) described how to respond to public comments. However, the difference should be evaluated cautiously due to variations in populations and time points. Although citizens are important components of interactivity, it is interesting that policy documents seldom mention the citizen commenting element. Only a few policy documents indirectly state that citizens should not post offensive and defamatory content. However, in contrast, social media policies from western countries (e.g., the US) highlight that citizens should comply with particular rules when they interact with government departments through official social media (Hrdinová et al., 2010). NASCIO (2013) confirmed that rules for public commenting are included in the list of the top six most frequently occurring social media policy provisions. In practice, regulating citizen behaviors related to online interaction is an important tactic to restrict the occurrence of inappropriate behaviors, e.g., profane and sexual content (Mergel & Greeves, 2012). The rules provide important foundations for government to address citizens' online comments as well. Theses prominent differences might be due to the unique social and political environment of China. New media, such as microblogs, are important platforms for opinion expression, social protest and civic participation due to scarce and blocked offline official channels (Tong & Lei, 2013). Besides, Chinese citizens are gradually becoming aware of the value of freedom of speech (Lee, 2012), and formal policies that guide them to comment and express themselves in a reasonable manner might incur their disgust and protest. Practically, Chinese government organizations are always criticized on the Internet due to the negative effects of income inequality, social injustice and corruption

of the officials (Sullivan, 2014; Tong & Lei, 2013). Thus, incorporating the citizen commenting element into policy documents might cause government agencies to face unpredicted dilemmas and risks. This study has some limitations. The content analysis helped us to delineate how policy documents respond to the affordances of social media, but it cannot definitively explain why they do so. Meanwhile, the study only analyzed publicly available documents. There are documents enacted but might not be available on the Internet. Although China has issued nationwide regulations to drive government bodies toward open government information, the effects of the implementation are not always satisfactory due to numerous constraints, including government capacity, available resources and awareness of the value of open information (Piotrowski, Zhang, Lin, & Yu, 2009). Policy documents, which cannot be retrieved through the internet, were omitted. 5.2. Conclusion This study explored how Chinese government organizations manage governmental social media use through policies that respond to four affordances of social media. This study contributes to the existing literature through followings. On one hand, this study has discerned four affordances of social media for Chinese governmental social media use by examining the existing literature on visibility, persistence, editability, and interactivity. On the other hand, the study has found that Chinese government organizations present distinct perceptions toward the four affordances of social media. Chinese government departments present positive perceptions toward editability, but perceive more negative aspects of persistence. Government departments are prone to perceiving both opportunities and challenges for visibility and interactivity. Moreover, the study found that these government agencies place a distinct emphasis on policy elements employed to govern the affordances. Further studies might extend the arguments of this study. Future studies may explore the omission of setting rules for citizens' online commenting. It could be interesting to explore the relationship between censorship and social media policies in China. The Chinese government established an efficient and comprehensive system of internet controls for filtering and monitoring online information in the 1990s (Yang, 2012). Almost all activities in cyberspace occur in the shadow of tight surveillance, especially those activities that might result in social tension and harm social stability (Hassid, 2012; Schlaeger & Jiang, 2014; Yang, 2012). However, although the Chinese government has actually endeavored to regulate citizens' online behavior, it has not enacted rules that citizens must follow when they interact with government organizations. Future studies might explain the phenomena through in-depth interview. In addition, direct comparisons of elements of social media policies between China and other countries might provide useful insights as well. Acknowledgments The paper is supported by National 985 Project of Non-traditional Security at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (2010−2020), National Social Science Foundation of China (14CZZ023), and the NSSFC Major Project (11&ZD033). References Argyris, Y. A., & Monu, K. (2015). Corporate use of social media: Technology affordance and external stakeholder relations. Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, 25(2), 140–168. Bekkers, V., Edwards, A., & de Kool, D. (2013). Social media monitoring: Responsive governance in the shadow of surveillance? Government Information Quarterly, 30(4), 335–342. Bertot, J. C., Jaeger, P. T., & Grimes, J. M. (2010). Using ICTs to create a culture of transparency: E-government and social media as openness and anti-corruption tools for societies. Government Information Quarterly, 27(3), 264–271.


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Zheng, L. (2013). Social media in Chinese government: Drivers, challenges and capabilities. Government Information Quarterly, 30(4), 369–376. Zheng, L., & Zheng, T. (2014). Innovation through social media in the public sector: Information and interactions. Government Information Quarterly, 31, S106–S117. Zimmer, C. G. (2012). Social media use in local public agencies: A study of California's cities. (Master thesis) California State University, Sacramento (Available at http://www. csus.edu/ppa/thesis-project/bank/2012/Zimmer.pdf). Qiang Chen, is a joint Ph.D. candidate from College of Public Administration at Huazhong University of Science and Technology; and Department of Media and Communication at City University of Hong Kong. His research interests are on social media and government innovation. Xiaolin Xu, is a professor and dean of College of Public Administration at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. His main research interests are on e-government and public administration. Bolin Cao, is a Ph.D. candidate from Department of Media and Communication at City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests are on Internet communication and social change. Wei Zhang, is a Ph.D. candidate from College of Public Administration at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. His research interests are on social media and government innovation.
