Tweeting Government: A Case of Australian Government Use of Twitter

2011 IEEE Ninth Ninth IEEE International Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing

Tweeting Government: A case of Australian government use of Twitter Lubna Alam

Richard Lucas

Faculty of Information Sciences and Engineering University of Canberra Canberra, Australia Email: [email protected]

Faculty of Information Sciences and Engineering University of Canberra Canberra, Australia Email: [email protected]

this platform by citizens, business and non-profit organisations. Australian people are at number four position for using Twitter in the world. Bull [4] conducted a study on Twitter users in Australia and found that ‘As of January 2010, 2.39% of Twitter Users are based in Australia’. Most Twitter users in Australia are in New South Wales, followed by Victoria and Tasmania. The study also highlighted many other interesting facts such as when significant news events happen like a leadership spill, users turn to Twitter (amongst many other online forums) to share their thoughts and views. There was a 25% spike in Tweets during a recent leadership spill [4]. The application of Twitter and Social network sites (SNS) in enterprises has been discussed in both practice and academia ( [3], [9]). However, there are few publications on government use of Twitter in general and on the Australian government in particular. This research-in-progress paper investigates Australian government use of Twitter and seeks to understand government Twitter use phenomenon. This paper will present an analysis of Twitter usage by some Australian government agencies by looking at communicative practices of government agencies through tweet characteristics, patterns of usage, and citizen interaction. The paper aims to provide an understanding of government Twitter use phenomenon with an attempt to answer the following basic questions:

Abstract—Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has gained considerable popularity among professionals, celebrities and lately by organisations and governments. The application of Twitter in enterprises has been discussed in both practice and academia. However there are few publications on government use of Twitter, in particular for Australian government. This research-inprogress paper investigates Australian government use of Twitter and seeks to understand government Twitter use phenomenon. Six government agency tweets were analysed to understand the communicative practices and types of use by the agencies. The analysis shows that agencies are primarily using Twitter to disperse information, particularly links to news articles about themselves, and to report on their activities. Further citizen interaction is also analysed within these agencies by analysing citizen tweets aimed at these agencies. The paper aims to contribute to better understanding of the government Twitter phenomenon on the public Social Network Site (SNS) that can lead to useful conclusions for government agency adoption and usage of Twitter. Index Terms—Twitter, Government, Genre Analysis

I. I NTRODUCTION Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has gained considerable popularity among professionals, celebrities and, lately, by organisations and governments [11], [10]. Twitter enables users to post tweets text-based posts of up to 140 characters (www.Twitter.com). Twitter is used to extend the reach of online messages to all stakeholders by referring followers to more in-depth reports, video, and data. Microblogging platforms like Twitter are becoming an essential part of electronic communication [12]. New institutional users are utilizing this web-based microblogging tool to share information, to alert users to emergencies, to create professional social networks, to build relationships with stakeholders, to report news, and to collaborate on projects [13]. Governments have realized that Twitter messages can have an unexpected reach [13]. Twitter use in government is creating entirely new online communities that defy traditional communication and reach. Many Government agencies use Twitter to communicate with the public and to learn their opinions on government issues and matters. For example, NASA used Twitter to publish information and news about its Mars/phoenix project. Over 42,000 people follow NASA‘s Twitter account [13]. In Australia, all levels of government (State, local, as well as Federal agencies) are using Twitter due to proliferation of 978-0-7695-4612-4/11 $26.00 © 2011 IEEE DOI 10.1109/DASC.2011.164

1) What are the communicative practices or patterns of microblogging communications by government? and 2) What type of communication citizen carry out with government using microblogging platforms? To address these research questions, six government agencies were selected encompasing federal, state, and local levels. Tweets collected from these agencies over a short time period were then analysed using communicative genre analysis [12]. This analysis seeks to determine the communication practices that used microblogging platforms. The paper is organised as follows: first it briefly summarizes Twitter related communicative practices and recent research on public and organizational microblogging. Secondly, it describes the research methodology, genre analysis, and tweet data analysis. This is followed by different genre classifications identified from the tweets collected (to provide an understanding of government Twitter usage, communicative practices, and patterns). The 996 995

Electronic Word of Mouth (ewe) and how it affects consumerpurchasing habits. They conducted a sentiment analysis over more than 150,000 tweets collected from 50 brands accounts. These contain comments and views about brands by users. The results were calculated per week for each brand and showed that more than 60% of the collected posts contained positive feeling towards the studied brands, 22% showed negative feelings, around 12% of the posts were mixed, and around 5% didnt have any posts for a few weeks. This type of study indeed can be useful for organizations that have customer satisfaction at the top of their strategic plan. Apart from using Twitter at the user-to-user, enterprise, and commercial level, there are other areas which researchers have become interested in investigating such as the use of Twitter by government agencies. Recently, governments have shown interest in using Twitter and many are currently active online providing citizens with information and assistance. However, there is little research in this area. Golbeck, Grimes, and Rogers‘2010 study [5] and Wigand [13] can be counted amongst the first attempts to understand how Twitter is being used by governments. Golbeck, Grimes, and Rogers [5] studied the use of Twitter by congress members of the United States of America. In their study, they analyzed the regulatory of posting, demographic distribution of members as well as the content of the collected tweets. In analyzing over 6,000 tweets, they identified nine different categories. Among them were: • Information — which compromises the vast majority (54.7%) of the sample. Here members tweet about their points of view and provide URLs for articles, and • Inner Communication — where members communicate with each other and with other congress staff. It was noted that only 7.4% of the tweets were for External Communication with the public community. Wigand [13] found that Twitter occupies a new and quite possibly an essential space in electronic communications so that governments might reach their constituents. Government agencies, in particular US government agencies, found Twitter an effective, efficient, timely, and valuable tool to get the word out. Wigand identified four different roles Twitter plays in government: – extending the reach of communication, – updating, – broadcasting and sharing information through networks, and – building relationships and collaborating with stakeholders. Wigand concludes with a framework for adoption and management of Twitter by government.

paper further reports on citizen interaction through Twitter and presents communicative practice of citizen engagement. Finally, results are discussed with implications and study limitations. II. R ELATED W ORK Twitter and other microblogging platforms has recently become the subject of research in different disciplines. Most of this research has focused on descriptions and explanations of Twitter (e.g. [2], [6]). There are many studies on the use of Twitter for political campaigning, in the context of civil unrest and protesting, as a form of electronic word-of-mouth for sharing consumer opinions [7], and usage pattern. These studies typically identify typical communication types and reasons; they associate this with types of users (see [12]). One of the earliest studies on Twitter was performed by Java et al. [8] where the authors studied the user‘s intent in using Twitter. They identified four different intentions: • Daily Chatter — where users use it to discuss daily and current activities, • Conversations — to communicate with others using the (@) symbol, • Sharing Information — through tweeting URLs, and • Reporting News — where users tweet about recent news and provide their own views on latest events on Twitter. The authors also grouped users into three different categories: • Information Source — who participate from time to time by providing updates and they follow many users, • Friends — which comprises the majority of users and falls under different categories such as family members, co-workers and friends, and • Information Seeker — who hardly tweet, but follow other users frequently. Riemer, Richter and Seltsikas [12] studied the use of Twitter at an enterprise level. They conducted a genre analysis of the collected data to understand how employees within the studied organization use it for communication and work related purposes. They identified six different categories: • Provide updates — where employees notify each other about progress on activities and decisions taken, • Coordinate others — to discuss task assignments, • Share information — where employees provide information about problem solving procedures that are useful to others, • Record information — such as: meetings notes and other related aspects, • Discuss and clarify — where information is provided to clarify something, and • Ask questions — employees refer something to others for decision or task progress. They also found that microblogging behaviour socially reproduces existing organisational and work structures. The use of Twitter has also been investigated in commercial settings. Jansen et al [7] examined the use of Twitter as

III. R ESEARCH M ETHODOLOGY The research investigated Twitter feeds for six government agencies. As the paper aims to form an initial understand the government Twitter phenomenon, hence the agencies were selected with an aim to cover all

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index.php). However, as this research has focused on particular government agencies, it was not possible to generate an archive for individual agency names. Analysis tools like WordStat, Leximancer focus on the frequency of word that have been used. This type of analysis can be problematic for tweets as Twitter posts are very short message often with links and the real message that agencies want to convey are in those external links. For example, Victoria Police has posted a tweet VictoriaPolice: One door opens and another door closes http://bit.ly/haBLs9 (expand ) Dec 14, 2010 01:25 AM GMT. A text analysis tool will fail to understand the meaning of these types of tweets where you need to actually click on the link to find out what was being said. Hence to analyse the communicative practices of these agencies with Twitter, automated analysis tools were not used. Rather genre analysis was used as a method for analyzing communicative practices for Twitter use and, as outlined in the related work section earlier, this is an accepted method of Twitter data analysis (see [11], [10]).

three levels of government including federal, state and local government agency. As no formal list of Australian government Twitter list exists, the agencies were selected randomly following convenience sampling. Victoria Police and Mosman Council are well known for their social media use in popular press, in particular for emergency situations (e.g. during Queensland floods). The agencies are: Federal government: – National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) - NFSA develop, preserve, maintain, promote and provide access to a national collection of film, sound and related material. Twitter handle @NFSAonline. – Department of Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy (DBCDE) - its strategic policy areas include national broadband network, postal and telecommunications policies and programs, spectrum management, broadcasting policy, digital economy and so on. State government: – VictoriaPolice - Victoria Police provides a 24 hour police service to the Victorian community by ensuring a safe and secure society and underpins the economic, social and cultural wellbeing of Victoria. – AmbulanceVIC - Ambulance Victoria was formed from three previous services agencies, MAS, RAV, and ADAS. It provides all the ambulance services in Victories. Local government: – Metrotrains - Melbournes new metropolitan rail service operates 150 six-carriage trains across 830 kilometers of track in Melbourne. There are around 400000 customers using the train service each day. – MosmanCouncil - Mosman is located on the northern shores of Sydney Harbour, Mosman Council plans for building and development, provides services for citizen who live in there.

B. Genre Analysis The research carried out a genre analysis of the tweeter posts (or tweets) for six government organisations specifically. Yates and Orlikowski have coined the concept genre of organizational communication in their research. They define genre analysis as a: Typified communicative action invoked in response to a recurrent situation. The recurrent situation or socially defined need includes the history and the nature of established practices, social relations and communication media within organization. Yates and Orlikowski ( [14], p. 301). According to Askehave and Swales [1], the main approach of classifying communicative activities into genres is by understanding the purpose and type of the communication. In this paper, applying genre analysis to classify the agencys tweets into genres based on the purpose and type of communication is suitable for this study [12]].

A. Data collection and analysis

IV. R ESULTS

The extent of an organizations footprint on Twitter can be vast. To reduce this to a manageable level, data was collected for the six government agencys tweets for only two weeks. This paper presents an analysis of posts that were collected from 14 December 2010 to 26 December 2010. Two types of tweets were collected to gain an understanding of the communicative practices: agency tweets and citizen tweets with these agencies. There were 305 tweets collected for the six agencies and 414 tweets from citizens were collected using @ tweets with the agency Twitter names. There are various automated tools available for collecting, analysing, and representing Twitter data. These are useful for very large datasets. However for a study of this size, they are not. For example, data collection tools like Twapperkeeper (http://twapperkeeper.com/

A. Genre Analysis of government tweets This section presents the findings of the genre analysis of the collected tweets. The collected sample allowed the identification of seven broad genres that are discussed bellow. Figures 1 – 5 show the seven genres identified and their distribution across the Federal, State, and Local agencies. 1) News and Updates: This genre accounts for 62% of the collected tweets. Agencies tweet about news and updates related to their department. For example: VictoriaPolice updates news and information about citizen safety, Metrotrains updates the news about changes or timetables, AmbulanceVic updates and posts information about health, Mosman Council updates and posts news and policy information about Mosman (a suburb of

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Fig. 1: Genres for agency tweets and their frequency: National Film and Sound Archive

Fig. 4: Genres for agency tweets and their frequency: Metro Train

Fig. 2: Genres for agency tweets and their frequency: Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy

Fig. 5: Genres for agency tweets and their frequency: Mosman Council

Sydney), the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) tweet about their new flicker account or about their collaboration with other organizations or projects that the department is undertaking. An example of a post for this genre is: – metrotrains: Major Delays - Epping line: both dir’s (Signal equipment fault at Epping). Trains may be delayed by up to 20 minutes. #MetroTrains 2) External Information: This genre accounts for 13% of the collected tweets. In this genre the agency tweets about information that is external to the agency and not related to the agencys activities. External information could be from public news, policy from other agencies, news updates of other agencies, external blogs, statistics, and internet articles and reports. Most of external information is relative, or relevant, to an agency‘s purpose. Examples of this genre‘s posts are: – mosmancouncil: Sydney Ferries: from Monday,

Fig. 3: Genres for agency tweets and their frequency: Victoria Police

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weekday 8am service Circular Quay to Mosman changes to 7.55am, arriving Mosman 8.11am http://bit.ly/hi2lh1 (expand ) – NFSAonline: Celebrating dance in Australia during the centenary of Ballet Russes http://aso.gov.au/news/2010/12/14/ballet-russes/ http://fb.me/B3cTEdsT 3) Retweets: Retweeting accounts for 11% of the collected tweet. Retweet (RT) is a way of reposting a post or posting a tweet that belongs to another user [5]. Some agencies retweet posts that is posed by other users or agency, to notify agencies followers with events that are going to be held in Australia or internationally. Retweets thus again can be sub-divided into same genres such as information, external events, news updates, feedback request, job vacancies and question. – DBCDEgov: RT @BernardKeane: Glenn Dyer and I writing about the convergence review and Australian media today in Crikey: http://bit.ly/eD1wSj (expand) #converg – NFSAonline: RT @dialmformovies: Animal Kingdom at Number 2! RT @awardsdaily: LA Times Turans Best of 2010 http://bit.ly/gaqZQF (expand) 4) Respond to User: This genre accounts for 9% of the collected tweets. Here, government agencies give feedbacks to their users when they get suggestions, questions, or complaints about their service or work. – NFSAonline: @sammartino A very inspiring piece to take away and mull over before a new year. Thanks – metrotrains: @kiwiguy72 ...we can reply with more info and let you know about how it’s being resolved. (2/2) 5) External Event Announcement: This genre accounts for 4% of the collected sample. In this genre the agency tweets about events that are external to the agency and not related to the agencys events, which will happen either in Australia or internationally. An example of this genre is: – DBCDEgov: Au Govt has released the #nbn corporate plan, available here: http://bit.ly/fnRZJc (expand) Media release here: http://bit.ly/hVHXRZ (expand) 6) Asking a Question: This genre accounts for 1% of the collected sample. This is where an agency tweets questions to initiate discussions with users. Questions such as asking questions about their favourite songs or movies. This allows for more discussions to be initiated between users. An example of a post for this genre is: – NFSAonline: Shall we make the #collectionfishing theme this week ”summer”? 7) Job Vacancies: This genre accounts for 1% of the collected sample. In this genre, the agency tweets about available positions in the department. Although, this is the least common genre identified, it is a useful way of announcing vacancies in the department, which will make

Fig. 6: Genres for citizen tweets: distribution across agencies

the employment process faster. An example of a post for this genre is: – DBCDEgov: New job posting 2/2: Project Officers (APS6), Several - Digital Switchover Taskforce http://bit.ly/i7Uacp (expand) #jobs #canberra B. Genre Analysis of citizen Interaction To gain an understanding of citizen interaction with the agencies using Twitter, the tweets collected were classified into five major genres. The five genres are depicted in Figure 6. It is also interesting to gauge out the differences between the agencies in terms of the types of tweets different agencies are receiving. Figure 6 also depicts the distribution of different tweets across the six agencies. 1) Complaint: The largest proportion (38.9%) of tweets are complaints to government agencies. Citizen often disagree with the tweets posted by government agencies, or, they complain about service or policies. Most of the complaints in this collection were aimed at Metrotrains, possibly due the nature of their service. Examples of this genre are: – JulesMorilly: @metrotrains Do you actually look at all of your tweets in a day and realise what a useless service you are running? Seriously? – DrWevil: RT @AlfredHealth: Illegal crackers pose serious risk of a HUGE bill from @AmbulanceVic 2) Positive Feedback: The second largest genre of citizen tweets (23.1%) is positive feedback. Citizens post positive comments in order to affirm or congratulate the efforts of a government agency. VictoriaPolice gained the most positive feedback from citizens by providing information and recommendations about security and crime issues. Examples of this genre are: – ikdow: Police targeting the real causes of danger to us all. @VictoriaPolice: New technology leads Christmas road campaign http://bit.ly/hJtRS4 (expand) – mattriviera: Great resource. RT @jfnolen Just in time

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– Twitter provides two-way conversation channel. Based on the tweet analysis of both government agency and citizen tweets, we can conclude that Twitter is being used more for informing and involving citizens and to a lesser extent for consulting and collaborating with citizens. – Citizens are more engaged with agencies like Metrotrains or VictoriaPolice due to the nature of their service such as public transport impacts them on daily basis. They are less interested to communicate using Twitter with federal agencies like NFSA or DBCDE as they are more about policy and there is no need to engage on regular basis. – The tweet analysis shows that there are government to citizen (G2C) and government to government (G2G) tweets. However, in this sample, there are no tweets related to government to business (G2B): Further research here is required.

for Christmas, the National Film & Sound Archive (@NFSAonline) have given us their new website! 3) Promotion: There are 17.4% tweets where citizens promote an agency‘s activities. Citizens post tweets from government agencies to share government news and updates. This is often by simply retweeting the government agencies‘tweets. Some have made their own daily newspaper by grabbing news from Twitter, it seems a self promotion activity, but the content of their daily paper is still related to government agency. So I didnt separate them to two different genres. Examples of this genre are: – mrmichaelrogers: RT @VictoriaPolice: Man dies after crashing into tree http://bit.ly/gDE3Ox (expand) – paintmehappy: The paintmehappy Daily is out! http://bit.ly/fgFyM8 (expand) ? Top stories today by @entregreeneur @dbcdegov @mumbrella 4) Asking a Question: There are 11.6% tweets that ask a question. In this genre, citizen post questions to government agencies for clarification or to ask for further explanation. As tweets are only 140 characters, often citizens do not understand the message . Examples of this genre are: – zoomosis: RT @Chelsworthgale: Why don’t trains have identifier numbers above each door internally like trams? @metrotrains – TheTooHugeWorld: RT @VictoriaPolice Woman sexually assaulted in Frankston http://bit.ly/hRcPON (expand) ¡¡ did you forget the word ”not” in there??? 5) Suggestion: There are 8.5% tweets that make suggestions to the agencies. In this genre, citizens post some ideas and opinion in order to help and improve government agencies‘service delivery. Often citizens share links to information and resources on the internet with government that they believe may be useful. For example, many citizens suggested Metrotrains should change their way of updating the train timetable. Examples of this genre are: – YogaChicky: Dear @metrotrains, pls put wifi on all your vehicles. It will make for happier commuters! – SnivellingPinko: I recommend @VictoriaPolice feed. I didn‘t know I wanted to know about all these sordid goings-on, but now find I can‘t avert my gaze.

VI. C ONCLUSION The study examined the use of Twitter by Australian government agencies and by citizen interactions. In order to gain an understanding of communicative practices by government agencies and citizen interactions, the study used genres to categorize the type of communications being carried out within this microblogging platform. The tweet analysis reveals that government agencies are using tweets mostly to disseminate or broadcast news and updates about their agency or external agency information and events. There is little evidence of consultation except for a few efforts that asked questions with a view to generating responses. Citizen interactions using Twitter are mostly in the form of feedback (positive and negative) to agencies. Citizens also promote government tweets by sharing links or information from government tweets. It is evident however that the majority of government agencies are trying to build long term relationships with citizens using Twitter. This paper has contributed to a better understanding of the government Twitter phenomenon on the public Social Network Site (SNS) which has in turn provided some useful information for government agencies‘adoption and usage of Twitter. The study, however, has some limitations: It looked at a short timeframe (two weeks); the data collected was limited. It would be ideal to carry out a longitudinal study with larger sets of data. Further research ought to investigate the existence of social networks or communities within the use of Twitter by citizen and government. Future research should also look into the impacts of government Twitter use as an electronic channel of communication.

V. D ISCUSSION Based on the collected tweets, further observations can be made as follows: – As mentioned earlier, Wigand [13] presents four major roles Twitter plays in government. ∗ extending the reach of communication ∗ updating and sharing information, ∗ building relationships, and ∗ collaborating with stakeholders. This is supported by this study with the majority of tweets news and updates, external information, and event sharing.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank Ming Xu, Ahmed Ahmednafea, and Sukhmani. Parts of the research work were carried out in the subject Social informatics and Extension Studies (2010) at the University of Canberra. R EFERENCES [1] I Askehave and J.M.Swales, JM , Genre identification and communicative purpose: a problem and a possible solution, Applied Linguistics, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 195-212, 2001 [2] S. J. Barnes and M. Bhringer, Continuance Usage Intention in Microblogging Services: The Case of Twitter (Konferenzbeitrag), Proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS),Verona, Italy June 8-10, http://www.ecis2009.it/papers/ecis2009-0164.pdf, 2009. [3] D. Boyd and N. Ellison, Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol. 13, no. 1, p. article 11, 2007. [4] T. Bull, Tracking the engagement of 150K Australian Twitter users over 7 months, viewed on 18 October, 2010. http://blog.tribalytic.com/tracking-engagement-150k-australianTwitter-users-7-months/, 2010. [5] J. Golbeck, J. M. Grimes, and A. Rogers, Twitter use by the U.S. Congress, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, vol. 61, no. 8, pp. 1612-21, 2010.

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