Boosting E-Participation

In this chapter, the authors show two case studies of the use of social media in municipal governments: Lerma, a small municipality with a significant growth, and Metepec, an important municipality of the State of México. The purpose of this chapter is to provide empirical evidence of how social media improves government to citizen relationship and promotes e-participation in municipal governments. The results are based on semi-structured interviews applied to public servants and a survey to evaluate e-government services by citizens. So, the citizen perception is contrasted with public servants' interviews. Citizens consider that electronic procedures and services implemented by their municipalities do not generate value. The efforts of governments should focus on avoiding corruption, making governments transparent, opening data, and properly managing the privacy of information.

Since 2011, Canada like many other countries, has been formally using social media as part of its open government policy. In the past few years, many federal and provincial departments and agencies in Canada have invested significant resources in social media initiatives and begun to build up their presence on social media platforms. This research examines if the use of social media makes a difference and adds value in public service delivery. The study focuses on immigration agencies in Canada – the federal government’s Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the Province of Ontario’s Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration (MCI) – and comparison with Australia and New Zealand as two other jurisdictions using social media in immigration related matters. It is aimed at capturing and analysing the perspectives of both public servants and users of government social media, therefore, filling existing gaps in the literature related to how government immigration agencies are using social media and how that use relates to social media users’ expectations and needs. The methodology used in this study includes qualitative methods: document analysis, content analysis and semi-structured interviews. Content analysis of social media data is supplemented by analysis of government documents and interview data offering insights into the meaning of effective use of social media for government and social media users. Using existing secondary sources from the scholarly and practitioner literature, the study also defines and examines effective use of social media by government and includes recommendations for practitioners. Findings of this study add value to existing scholarship on public policy and administration and for policy makers and public servants responsible for the use of social media in government to improve existing policy and public service delivery.

Since 2011, Canada like many other countries, has been formally using social media as part of its open government policy. In the past few years, many federal and provincial departments and agencies in Canada have invested significant resources in social media initiatives and begun to build up their presence on social media platforms. This research examines if the use of social media makes a difference and adds value in public service delivery. The study focuses on immigration agencies in Canada – the federal government’s Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the Province of Ontario’s Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration (MCI) – and comparison with Australia and New Zealand as two other jurisdictions using social media in immigration related matters. It is aimed at capturing and analysing the perspectives of both public servants and users of government social media, therefore, filling existing gaps in the literature related to how government immigration agencies are using social media and how that use relates to social media users’ expectations and needs. The methodology used in this study includes qualitative methods: document analysis, content analysis and semi-structured interviews. Content analysis of social media data is supplemented by analysis of government documents and interview data offering insights into the meaning of effective use of social media for government and social media users. Using existing secondary sources from the scholarly and practitioner literature, the study also defines and examines effective use of social media by government and includes recommendations for practitioners. Findings of this study add value to existing scholarship on public policy and administration and for policy makers and public servants responsible for the use of social media in government to improve existing policy and public service delivery.

Background and Context The increasingly widespread use of social media to expand one's social connections is a relatively new but important phenomenon that has implications for teaching, learning, and teachers’ professional knowledge and development in the 21st century. Educational research in this area is expanding, but further investigation is necessary to better determine how to best support teachers in their professional development, collaboration, and classroom teaching. Prior literature reviews have focused extensively on higher education settings or particular platforms or platform types (e.g., Facebook, microblogging). This article provides needed insights into K–12 settings and encompasses work from a variety of social media types. We describe a systematic review of more than a decade of educational research from various countries to present the state of the field in K–12 teachers’ use of social media for teaching and professional learning across various platforms. Research Questions To define social media's potentially beneficial roles in teaching and learning, we must first take an in-depth look at teachers’ current social media practices. Toward this end, we approached our review with the following research question: How are social media perceived and used by K–12 teachers for their teaching or professional learning, and with what impacts on teachers’ practices? Research Design Guided by Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) established standards for rigor and quality in systematic literature reviews, this article reviews empirical research to examine how social media are perceived and used by K–12 teachers with what impacts on teachers’ practices. Findings We find that social media features offer several benefits for helping teachers fulfill their goals for classroom teaching, including enhancing student engagement, community connections, and teacher–student interactions, but these affordances come with challenges that must be navigated. The literature also suggests that social media features provide benefits for teachers’ professional learning within both formal professional development programs and informal learning networks. Conclusions Implications of this literature review for future research and the design of educational practices are discussed in the final section. Among our conclusions are calls for more data triangulation between teachers’ and students’ learning and experiences on social media, more attention to teachers’ observational behaviors on social media, and further exploration of how social media facilitates interplay between teachers’ formal and informal learning.

The process of post-conflict reconstruction in Liberia involves an array of actors vying for power. Many of the key political and civic figures involved are former warlords, whose reigns of terror affected many they now work with and serve. By reframing themselves through social media these warlords have created new centers of power, embracing their new roles as public servants and renouncing past acts of terrorism. This article focuses on two of Liberia’s most notorious former warlords, Prince Johnson and Joshua Blahyi. Johnson, now Senator Johnson, was best known for swilling beer while he conducted the video-taped torture of President Doe. Joshua Blahyi, formerly General Butt Naked, who infamously drank children’s blood before running naked into battle, is now a born-again preacher with his own faith-based NGO. We argue that their use of social media has enabled them to reconstruct and reframe their ‘past lives’, ensuring these cannot become political liabilities.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the sources of self-efficacy that researchers rely on when using social media for knowledge sharing and to explore how these sources impact their use. Design/methodology/approach The study employed 30 semi-structured interviews with researchers at a major Scottish university. The authors analysed the interview transcriptions using directed content analysis. Findings The researchers relied on the four sources of self-efficacy proposed by Bandura (1977) when using social media for knowledge sharing. These sources lead researchers to use social media effectively and frequently for sharing knowledge, although some may discourage its use. Research limitations/implications It extends the self-efficacy integrative theoretical framework of Bandura (1977) by presenting the relative amount of the influence of these sources for researchers to share their ideas, experiences, questions and research outputs on social media. While the participants included academic staff, postdoctoral researchers, and PhD students, the majority were PhD students. Practical implications The findings can help universities understand how to promote productive use of social media. For example, academic staff who have high personal mastery experience could mentor those who do not. Originality/value This is the first known study to investigate the sources of self-efficacy that impact researchers’ use of social media for knowledge sharing.

Abstract This article explores Pakistani and Bhutanese teacher educators’ digital competences about the use of social media, digital resources and professional online communities and implications of this on professional learning. The two countries, less discussed in international educational literature, are facing a growing use of the Internet in teaching and learning. Data include a survey completed by 67 teacher educators from Pakistan and 37 teachers from Bhutan, as well as semi-structured interviews from both countries. This study provides evidence of how teachers’ interaction on social networks and the use of digital resources play a central role in the introduction of innovative pedagogical practices of teacher educators, and teacher educators remain interested in knowledge sharing through social media for their professional learning.

The 2016 Brexit decision and Donald Trump's election to the US presidency that same year led to a wide variety of social media activity, ranging from visceral anger to unadulterated jubilation. How members of particular fandoms choose to express their emotions regarding a geopolitical event can be filtered through the lens of their fannish enthusiasm. Analysis of Doctor Who-influenced geopolitical engagement on Facebook that uses case studies of both Brexit and Donald Trump's election and 2017 inauguration shows that fans used Doctor Who to cope with emotionally taxing geopolitical events and expressed their anguish through the lens of selected Doctor Who plotlines. This use of social media permits fans to shape a new geopolitical landscape within which they can grapple with their political surroundings as influenced by their fandom.

This study investigates the interface between increased religiousity among Muslim Arab women in Israel, and their social media use. To understand their use of social media as part of a profound change in social identity, fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with Muslim women aged 19-26 who are, or have been, social media users, who live in Israel, and who have become significantly more religious than they had previously been. The findings show two different logics of social media use in times of religious identity change. The first includes reconstructing social media ties to be an alternative, supportive environment, while the second relates to decision making based on the religious rules newly adopted by respondents. Two main social practices were related to the second kind of social media use: managing (and often removing) ties with male users, which raised profound personal dilemmas, and removing digital traces by deleting past posts and photos. Such decisions were made to obey religious rules rather than to gratify personal needs. Social media accompany and assist in the identity change, starting from its very beginnings, and throughout the process. While previous research shows that SNS tie management is an essential part of our identity, our findings show the religious identity of women to be a distinct case where religious rules guide behaviour and decision making. The very fact that these acts and dilemmas are visible to us is a result of paying special attention to identities in flux.