1. Government Communication on the Social Web
An Experimental Study Exploring the Use of
Interactive and Participative Elements
Daniel Heine, M. A.
Euprera Spring Symposium Ghent 2010
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5. Social Web – From “Bypass“ to “Main Artery“?
Has the Social Web the potential to improve
government communication in a way that it is no
longer used exclusively as a “bypass” to get around
mainstream media?
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6. Background
Output side of the political process
_ Neglected perspective (in contrast to election campaigns)
_ Focus on functions a government has to fulfill: policy implementation (Blum &
Schubert 2009)
Communication is essential to put political decisions into effect
_ Citizens ought to act according laws (generally binding decisions) – but often they
cannot or should not be forced
_ Communicative persuasion is necessary
Communication is framed by specific social circumstances
_ Network Society (Castells 2006; Van Dijk 2006)
_ Mediatisation (Krotz 2007)
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7. Research Question
_ Is the Social Web more effective than other, “established” communication tools?
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9. Experimental Research Setting
Object
_ Examining a causal link between the
use of a communication tool as an
instrument of government
communication and the achieved
effects
Basic idea
_ Simulating the communication
process occurring in the context of
policy implementation using different
communication tools under constant
circumstances
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10. Independent Variable: Social Web Use
Social Web
_ Interactive and participative elements in online communication settings (Welker &
Zerfaß 2008 p. 12)
Four levels of Social Web use
1. Neither participative nor interactive: no Social Web (control group)
2. participative and interactive: Simple Social Web
a. based on text: Simple Social Web/Comment (experiment group I)
b. based on video: Simple Social Web/Video (experiment group II)
3. participative and interactive based on both text and video allowing to recount
relatedness of earlier messages : Complex Social Web (experiment group III)
„Lurking“ as dominant using practice
_ Only six percent off all onliners are writing blogs, adding comments or videos
(Busemann & Gscheidle 2009: 357)
_ Analyzes of passive use (reception) of Social Web
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12. Treatment: Fake Law
“Konsumkostenentlastungsprogramm” – “Consumption Discharge Act”
_ Saxon federal state law
_ Refund of VAT payments for private spendings in shops in Saxony in July 2009
_ Application as condition sine qua non
_ Other regulations, descriptions, etc. according to real wording
_ Sophisticated internal construction – understanding all the regulations is not trivial
_ Issue and political intent refer to the surrounding situation of economic crisis (e.g. in
Germany Abwrackprämie, Wachstumsbeschleunigungsgesetz)
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13. Treatment: Fake Government Website
Control Group
_ No Social Web
_ Neither opportunities to participate nor
to interact (no relations between
messages because there is only one
sender: the government)
_ Represents „traditional“ tools of online
(government) communication
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15. Treatment: Fake Government Website
Experiment Group I
_ Simple Social Web/Comment
_ Opportunity to participate in
communication sequences by adding a
comment
_ No differentiation between sender and
recipient
_ Relations between messages from
different senders
_ Represents the communication style of
weblogs
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17. Treatment: Fake Government Website
Experiment Group II
_ Simple Social Web/Video
_ Opportunity to participate in
communication sequences by adding a
video comment
_ No differentiation between sender and
recipient
_ Relations between messages from
different senders
_ Representing the communication style of
video blogs
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19. Treatment: Fake Government Website
Experiment Group III
_ Complex Social Web
_ Opportunity to participate in
communication sequences by adding
both videos and text comments
_ Relations between messages taking into
account the relatedness of earlier
messages
_ Represents the communication practiced
at Social Web Platforms like Youtube
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21. Research Participants and Sampling Procedure
Sampling procedure
_ Particular choice of typical cases: Persons with
different use of Social Web and political interest
_ Setting up „statistical twins“
_ Random matching to one version of the website
Location an time
_ Check-in-area of Leipzig/Halle Airport
_ 23., 24. June 2009
Measurement methods
_ Survey (questionnaire)
_ Observation (did anyone take an application
form?)
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22. Analysis
Steps
_ Calculation of indices for every measurement range
_ Aggregation of the separate indices to one index describing the global communication
effect (PICO)
_ Bi- and multivariate analysis on different levels of data aggregation considering other
independent/intervening variables:
_ Analysis of variances
_ Rank correlation
Limitations
_ Statistical analysis yielded no significant effect
_ Probably because of the low number of participants (Diekmann 2009 p. 714).
Interpretation is limited
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24. Socio Demographic Structure
_ All in all 68 research
participants
_ According to this 17 research
participants each experiment
group
_ 59,7 % male, 40,3 % female
_ Average age: 38 years
_ Different professions, use of
internet and Social Web,
political interest
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25. Social Web Improves Communication Effects
_ Lowest communication effect in control group (no Social Web use)
_ Complex Social Web (comments and videos) shows best effects in affective
measurement ranges where it even beats forms of moderate Social Web use (in
contrast to the global level)
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26. Influence of Intervening Variables
Use of Social Web
_ Declining communication effect caused
by Social Web use when there is a lack
of routine in handling Social Web
applications and platforms
Political interest
_ Communication effect improvement is
higher with research participants with
less political interest
Involvement
_ Communication effect improvement is
higher with research participants with
high involvement
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28. Discussion
Social Web has the potential to be more than a “bypass”
_ Empirical reasons to suppose that Social Web use as an instrument of government
communication has positive influence on the communication effects
_ Using relatively simple patterns of participation and interaction is usually the most
suitable way to communicate political decisions
_ Complex forms of Social Web should be used when the focus lies on persuasion
(changing emotions, opinions, attitudes, behavior)
All these effects do not conform to any automatism
_ Practice in using Social Web leads to greater increase of the communication effect
caused by Social Web use
_ Less political interest leads to greater increase of the communication effect caused by
Social Web use
_ Higher involvement of a person in a policy leads to greater increase of the
communication effect caused by Social Web use
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29. Thank You For Your Attention
Daniel Heine
M. A. Communication Management | B. A. Media Management
University of Leipzig | City of Dresden
daniel_heine@yahoo.de
www.danielheine.de
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30. References
_ Bieber, C. (2006). Zwischen Grundversorgung und Bypass-Operation. Von der Idee
zur Praxis digitaler Regierungskommunikation. In Kamps, K. & Nieland, J.-U. (Eds.):
Regieren und Kommunikation. Meinungsbildung, Entscheidungsfindung und
gouvernementales Kommunikationsmanagement – Trends, Vergleiche, Perspektiven
(pp. 239-260).
_ Blum, S. & Schubert, K. (2009): Politikfeldanalyse.
_ Busemann, K./Gscheidle, C. (2009). Web 2.0: Communitys bei jungen Nutzern
beliebt. Ergebnisse der ARD/ZDF-Onlinestudie 2009. In Media Perspektiven, No. 7, S.
356–364. URL: http://www.media-
perspektiven.de/uploads/tx_mppublications/Busemann_7_09.pdf, last access
12.09.2009.
_ Castells, M. (2006). The Network Society: From Knowledge to Policy. In Castells, M.
(Ed.): The network society. From knowledge to policy (pp. 3–21).
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31. References
_ Diekmann, A. (2009). Empirische Sozialforschung. Grundlagen, Methoden,
Anwendungen.
_ Krotz, F. (2007). Mediatisierung. Fallstudien zum Wandel von Kommunikation.
_ Rafaeli, S. & Sudweeks, F. (1997). Networked Interactivity. In Journal of Computer
Mediated Communication, Vol 2, No. 4, URL: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-
bin/fulltext/120837708/HTMLSTARTW, last acsess 12.09.2009.
_ Welker, M. & Zerfaß, A. (2008). Einleitung: Social Web in Journalismus, Politik und
Wirtschaft. In Zerfaß, A., Welker, M. & Schmidt, J. (Eds.). Kommunikation,
Partizipation und Wirkungen im Social Web. Strategien und Anwendungen.
Perspektiven für Wirtschaft, Politik und Publizistik. Volume 2 (pp. 12-18).
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