icegov2012 proceedings

improve the government management efficiency, reduce the
administrative costs and provide more convenience to the citizens.
From the practice effect and data, the interactions in the Chinese
government institutional microblogs are still in the insufficient
level. In the all collected 206 message, only 45 of message got the
response from the government. There are also some defects in the
area of improving the communication efficiency on the
government institutional microblogs, for example, just two
messages use the function of directing, which can improve the
speed of information sharing and point to point information
forwarding. In addition, compared with the "spontaneous
message", most of them are "government message", and the
"interaction message" accounts a little. In the "interaction
message", the total number of "question answering message",
"explaining message" and "advices collecting message" are ten,
accounting for 0.05%. There is more "interaction message" in the
"forward message" category.
Through the number of "spontaneous message", it seems that
Chinese government agencies hope to use microblogs to enhance
the publicity effect. But during the process of interaction, most of
the government chooses to keep silence in order to avoiding the
possible misunderstanding. However, the government agencies
add more comments on the "forward message", which are less
relevant with their own department. In addition, although it's not
yet the mainstream way to interact with citizens though
microblogs, the influence of microblogs will be more and more
important with the number of users' rising.
6.2 Increase the Transparency
For the citizens, the government institutional microblogs play an
important role on the area of improving the government
information transparency. According to the data, the government
institutional should enhance the ability of government information
transparency.
Before exploring the issue of government transparency, there are
two conceptions needed to be clearly defined, which are
“Government Transparency” and “Government Outreach”.
Government Outreach means the government provides specific
information to particular groups. However, government
transparency is the government provides more transparent
information to the citizens and enhance citizens’ the ability to
question government. One scholar mentioned(Felten,2009):
“Outreach means government telling us what it wants us to
hear; transparency means giving us the information that we, the
citizens, want to get.”[7]
According to the different nature of messages, the research divided
the message contents into four categories, including Government
Message; Public Service Message; News and Interaction Message.
Government Message and News account for most of the numbers
in the all 206 messages. As we have analyzed, Government
Message and News are more related to government outreach, and
can’t improve the government transparency directly and
effectively. Public Service Message and Interaction Message are
the information what the citizens hope to be provided, but account
for lower percentage in practice according to our study.
6.3 Enhance the Public Services
The data also shows that the government institutional microblogs
pay much attention to the inner government issues and ignore
400
services to the outside public. According to the date analysis on
the topic of "Relevant Stakeholders ", messages related to the
government itself is more than 114, and the number related to the
outside Enterprise, Media and Individuals is less than 30. In other
words, the function of government to serve the citizens are
seemingly ignored, and obviously this approach won’t improve
effectively the interaction between government and citizens.
From the analysis on "Message Content", Chinese government
institutional microblogs issued more Government Messages and
News and less Public Service Messages and Interaction Messages.
In terms of "Message Types", the Daily Messages are more than
Live Messages and Emergency Messages. Thus, it seems that
current Chinese government institutional microblogs are used
more for issuing daily government Messages and news through the
new technical platform, and doesn't fully utilize other functions of
microblogs, such as instant interaction to provide public services.
6.4 Prevent Microblogs from Becoming a
"Mini Government Websites"
From the analysis on the type of "Message Forms" and "Language
Style", most of the messages and interactions are too formal and
has too much "Text". Many Chinese government institutional
microblogs are used more like “a mini government websites”, and
doesn’t fully take advantage of some unique features of
microblogs as a Web 2.0 tools to interact with citizens. Therefore,
we would like suggest Chinese government agencies to understand
and utilize microblogs more comprehensively and interactively to
enhance public services.
7. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE STUDY
This research studies the government institutional microblogs run
on Sina Weibo, the most influential microblog operator in China,
and ten government institutional microblogs at different levels, in
different regions and different departments are selected for
studying their content and interactions. The study indicates that
government microblogs indeed provide a new interactive platform
to the government and citizens. However, the study also finds that
most messages on government microblogs are Government
Messages and News, and only a few of them are Public Service
Messages and Interactive Messages, which means that the
government institutional microblogs are still used more as a
government outreach platform rather than a service and interaction
platform. Meanwhile, the study finds that government doesn't fully
use the functions of microblog to post Emergency Messages and
Live Messages. Most citizens have positive attitude towards
government institutional microblogs. But compared with their
attitude, government's responses are scarce and have only low
level interactions with citizens, especially when facing questions
and criticism from citizens.
The paper has also some limitations. This paper only selected ten
representative government institutional microblogs as case study,
and the future research could further expand the same sizes and do
more in-depth studies.
8. REFERENCES
[1] Bin. W, Government Communication 2.0: the Application and
Conception of Microblogs, New Media, 2011:4, 47