The Handbook of Public Sector Communication

21Public Sector Communication and Social Media: Opportunities and Limits of Current Policies, Activities, and Practices

Alessandro Lovari and Chiara Valentini

Introduction

This chapter deals with social media and how it influences the evolution of public sector communication in light of an increasing digitalization and modernization of organizational processes that the sector has been undergoing in late modern societies. Several scholars have noted that social media has brought a number of opportunities to public sector organizations (PSOs), including democratic participation, engagement, coproduction, and crowdsourcing (Bertot, Jaeger, & Hansen, 2012; Bonsón, Torres, Royo, & Flores, 2012). Social media can help PSOs in fostering participatory dialogue and providing a voice in discussions about policy development and implementation. It can be used to engage publics in developing government services through coproduction processes involving public servants and citizens. Coproduction happens when PSOs and citizens work together to create new public services or improve existing ones by offering suggestions through social media conversations. Finally, social media can be used as an online space for crowdsourcing, that is, a virtual environment where multiple actors, publics, public administrators etc. are invited to develop innovative solutions addressing public sectors' activities by drawing from collective knowledge and experiences. Crowdsourcing represents a high‐involvement ...