Factors in local governments’ digitalisation in the Northwestern Federal District of Russia: social media review

Abstract

With digital communication becoming a quotidian practice, social media has emerged as a common channel for personal and business communication, utilised by authorities among other actors. This article proposes an approach for measuring a territory’s digitalisation by quantifying local governments’ presence on social media. The work aims to identify digital underperformers among municipalities of Russia’s Northwestern Federal District, drawing on data from the Vkontakte social network. The empirical part of the research utilised data gathered from 2011 to 2022 on the socioeconomic performance and municipal heads of 1,083 settlements and 199 districts. Significant factors influencing municipalities’ presence on social media were determined using binary logistic regression, with two clustering results compared to identify the underperforming municipalities. It was concluded that population size, municipal revenues and expenditures, fiscal capacity and average salary are directly proportional to municipal social media presence, and the distance to the regional centre and the status of a district centre are inversely proportional to the study parameter. Age, place of residence and the method of nomination for elections affect the likelihood of a municipal head having a social media account. The findings show that a fourth of the study settlements, most of them located in the Pskov, Novgorod and Vologda regions, need to take measures to develop digital technologies and strengthen their social media presence.