Controlled and Responsive Interactivity: What Politicians and Bureaucrats in Oslo Say About Their Social Media Use, and What This Might Mean for Democracy

Abstract

AbstractThe development and global diffusion of social media lead to high expectations among scholars and practitioners that this could improve democracy, including in cities. Empirical research has, however, cast doubt on these expectations, and found that governments and policy makers rarely use social media to increase public participation. This chapter therefore investigates how local politicians, communication officers and other administrators in the urban development policy area in Oslo, describe their social media activities. One main finding of this study is that their use of social media is more interactive than is often described in political communication and e-government research. Another is that this interaction contains elements of not only controlled, but also responsive, interactivity. The main contribution of the chapter is the development of the concept of ‘responsive interactivity’. This is defined as being an activity in which politicians and bureaucrats acquire information about citizens opinions and grievances through social media, respond to and explain their stance and their actions to the users, and adapt policies, programmes, projects, or services to the citizens’ input. This contributes to a more nuanced image of governments’ use of social media that emphasizes the interactive aspects, without subscribing to the idea that this alone will democratize politics and government.