<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>Facebook has become an essential channel for local governments to convey information and interact with citizens, and communication on the platform has been studied intensively through a range of smaller case studies in various countries. By looking at the development of Swedish municipalities’ Facebook usage between 2009 and 2017, this article attempts to frame such use in a longitudinal perspective. Based on more than 85,000 posts from 38 Swedish local governments, the findings show that most municipalities have adapted to an online visual culture, using photos and videos “to go viral”. The findings also show large increases in interactions, such as sharing and liking, whilst commenting appears to lag behind. It also shows that local government Facebook pages retain a strong, yet decreasing, tie with government web pages, visible through a tendency of the Facebook page to recycle information from the web page.</p>
</abstract>

Facebook has become an essential channel for local governments to convey information and interact with citizens, and communication on the platform has been studied intensively through a range of smaller case studies in various countries. By looking at the development of Swedish municipalities’ Facebook usage between 2009 and 2017, this article attempts to frame such use in a longitudinal perspective. Based on more than 85,000 posts from 38 Swedish local governments, the findings show that most municipalities have adapted to an online visual culture, using photos and videos “to go viral”. The findings also show large increases in interactions, such as sharing and liking, whilst commenting appears to lag behind. It also shows that local government Facebook pages retain a strong, yet decreasing, tie with government web pages, visible through a tendency of the Facebook page to recycle information from the web page.

A Longitudinal Analysis of Swedish Local Governments on Facebook: A visualisation of communication

Nordicom Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Facebook has become an essential channel for local governments to convey information and interact with citizens, and communication on the platform has been...

A Longitudinal Analysis of Swedish Local Governments on Facebook: A visualisation of communication

Published Online: Nov 19, 2020

Page range: 147 - 162

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2020-0020

Keywords
local government, social media, Sweden, information recycling, visualisation

© 2020 André Baltz, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A Longitudinal Analysis of Swedish Local Governments on Facebook: A visualisation of communication

Published Online: Nov 19, 2020

Page range: 147 - 162

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2020-0020

Keywordslocal government, social media, Sweden, information recycling, visualisation

© 2020 André Baltz, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
local government, social media, Sweden, information recycling, visualisation