Social Media and Local Government in Indonesia: Adoption, Use and Stakeholder Engagement

Abstract

While social media has been extensively adopted by local governments, not all of its benefits have been achieved. One reason is that local government-owned social media is less appealing. This research argues that to increase public involvement in social media, the government needs to understand public behavior on social media by exploring public preferences on the content and media produced. This research applies a Stakeholder Engagement Index (SEI) to study public behavior on social media. The results of the study demonstrate that although content containing information about government activities has been produced, it has a low engagement level. Moreover, people prefer content with photos and videos, which apparently dominate local government posts and tweets. This research academically confirms that SEI is an alternative method for understanding public behavior on social media and practically presents choices of content categories preferred by the public.