The Reflection of Public Values in Twitter Use of Metropolitan Municipalities: a Content Analysis Employing the Analytic Hierarchy Process

Abstract

The reflection of public values (PVs) could be monitored through some indicators, like institutional social media tools. The measurement of how PVs are reflected over local social media accounts is of great importance. Studies in the relevant literature are mainly focusing on the benefits of social media presence, drivers, or barriers or attitudes and expectations on social media presence. We, in this study, focus on the evaluation of whether and how selected PVs are reflected through social media accounts of metropolitan municipalities (MMs) in Turkey. By taking participation, collaboration, and transparency as the main PVs, we have formed an evaluation metric composed of five sub-criteria for each determinant. With the help of seven public administration experts holding a Ph.D. degree to form an expert graded scheme by using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), we have employed a content analysis over Twitter accounts of 30 Turkish MMs using this expert graded scheme. We have found that Turkish MMs were found not to grasp the valuation of the selected PVs since most seem to fail to reflect them over their social media accounts to the full extent possible. Moreover, many Turkish MMs seem to have violated privacy and personal data.