Informal experimentation, centralization, or distribution? Assessing technological, organizational and contextual factors for social media institutionalization processes in Dutch municipalities
Affiliations: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, School of Business and Economics, De Boelelaan 1105, Room 6A-59, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands | Tel.: +31 20 598 31 33; E-mail: a.s.c.faber@vu.nl
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, School of Business and Economics, De Boelelaan 1105, Room 6A-59, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 20 598 31 33; E-mail: a.s.c.faber@vu.nl.
Abstract: Given the various benefits of social media for governments, municipalities are increasingly attempting to institutionalize their use of social media. This article looks at the use of middleware that is observed on municipal Twitter accounts in Dutch municipalities in 2018 and 2021 (N= 724), which provide a set of APIs that specify input and output modalities. It is observed that the use of subscription-based customer relationship management (CRM) tools, developed mostly in a corporate context, has grown considerably, with an uptake of 89.0% of Dutch municipalities in 2021, whereas the use of free CRM tools appears to be declining. Middleware were studied and linked to three models of social media institutionalization (informal experimentation, centralization, and distribution). Municipalities in the informal experimentation model were observed to have smaller population sizes and generally had fewer IT professionals in their constituencies. Larger municipalities with more IT professionals were mostly observed to have a centralized model of institutionalization. Although municipalities with a distributed institutionalization model were larger, they were generally less urbanized. Finally, more technologically advanced municipalities were only observed to make more use of the distributed model.
Keywords: Social media, Twitter, local government, middleware, regression analysisKey points for practitioners:•This study gives insight into how widespread different forms of social media middleware have become in local government. Although the conversation is often centered around the content of social media messages, this study highlights the importance to address the growing dominance of subscription-based middleware;•There might not be a single best way in which social media institutionalization takes place;•Different formalization processes might fit different technological, organizational, and contextual needs.
