Open Access

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

André Baltz
André Baltz
   | Nov 19, 2020
Nordicom Review's Cover Image
About this article
Previous Article
Next Article
Cite
Published Online: Nov 19, 2020
Page range: 147 - 162
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2020-0020
Keywords
© 2020 André Baltz, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Figure 1

Relative use of different posts, 2009–2017 (per cent)Comments: N = 85,482: 2009 (379); 2010 (2,961); 2011 (8,836); 2012 (11,057); 2013 (12,664); 2014 (12,558); 2015 (12,895); 2016 (13,986); 2017 (10,146, data collection ended on 15 September 2017). Post type here reflects only the choice made by the individual poster.
Relative use of different posts, 2009–2017 (per cent)Comments: N = 85,482: 2009 (379); 2010 (2,961); 2011 (8,836); 2012 (11,057); 2013 (12,664); 2014 (12,558); 2015 (12,895); 2016 (13,986); 2017 (10,146, data collection ended on 15 September 2017). Post type here reflects only the choice made by the individual poster.

Figure 2

Model portraying local governments’ external links on their Facebook pagesComments: N = 38,076. The threshold for nodes is set to 10, making only co-occurrences between a municipality (source) and category (target) that superseded 10 visible in the network. Through the modularity function (Blondel et al., 2008), three clusters were identified: a societal information cluster (blue; N = 31,632); a marketing and place-branding cluster (yellow; N = 4,644); and a press/publishing-service cluster (orange; N = 1,800). Node sizes indicate the number of links from a municipality (source) and line's thickness connection to a category (target).
Model portraying local governments’ external links on their Facebook pagesComments: N = 38,076. The threshold for nodes is set to 10, making only co-occurrences between a municipality (source) and category (target) that superseded 10 visible in the network. Through the modularity function (Blondel et al., 2008), three clusters were identified: a societal information cluster (blue; N = 31,632); a marketing and place-branding cluster (yellow; N = 4,644); and a press/publishing-service cluster (orange; N = 1,800). Node sizes indicate the number of links from a municipality (source) and line's thickness connection to a category (target).

Figure 3

Mean interactions per post, 2009–2017Comments: The figure illustrates changes in mean values. Standard deviation formula on sample population indicates large variations within these values.
Mean interactions per post, 2009–2017Comments: The figure illustrates changes in mean values. Standard deviation formula on sample population indicates large variations within these values.

Mean interaction per post type, 2012–2017

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Event
  Comments 0.43 (0.88) 0.48 (1.81) 0.22 (0.70) 0.73 (3.37) 0.58 (1.80) 0.58 (1.31)
  Shares 0.48 (1.26) 0.53 (1.56) 0.08 (0.29) < 0.01 (0.08) < 0.1 (0.08) < 0.01 (0.09)
  Likes 6.55 (10.50) 8.70 (20.93) 10.36 (19.59) 23.71 (72.47) 22.99 (53.64) 19.69 (35.96)
Link
  Comments 0.86 (2.94) 0.83 (2.78) 1.04 (3.30) 1.78 (5.19) 2.24 (6.19) 2.43 (7.50)
  Shares 0.60 (1.56) 1.10 (3.14) 2.88 (10.52) 4.95 (10.64) 6.52 (19.55) 6.64 (16.45)
  Likes 5.8 (13.41) 10.32 (24.47) 18.96 (53.79) 33.67 (74.08) 40.64 (75.85) 48.64 (84.72)
Photo
  Comments 4.57 (15.85) 4.42 (12.33) 3.22 (7.71) 5.16 (19.40) 4.40 (10.69) 5 (15.87)
  Shares 8.09 (114.28) 7.89 (43.98) 6.84 (18.24) 11.67 (71.24) 11.43 (33.74) 10.22 (30.41)
  Likes 69.89 (675.24) 75.9 (225.92) 80.09 (158.70) 128.44 (456.83) 128.88 (289.38) 112.29 (234.26)
Status
  Comments 3.33 (9.86) 3.39 (8.58) 2.57 (7.35) 2.39 (6.88) 2.39 (5.99) 2.81 (10.89)
  Shares 0.97 (4.13) 3.43 (13.01) 4.96 (19.17) 7.40 (43.73) 7.56 (28.35) 10.60 (68.42)
  Likes 14.90 (55.39) 21.94 (70.64) 22.95 (84.91) 22.97 (58.17) 22.43 (57.79) 50.08 (560.17)
Video
  Comments 1.57 (5.25) 1.63 (3.93) 2.45 (8.72) 4.70 (15.24) 6.97 (18.44) 8.63 (51.53)
  Shares 1.61 (3.59) 5.18 (29.76) 13.51 (141.92) 17.60 (111.42) 31.67 (170.03) 29 (396.33)
  Likes 8.54 (13.12) 22.28 (40.84) 50.38 (141.72) 81.43 (138.64) 133.19 (327.61) 120.85 (392.21)
eISSN:
2001-5119
Language:
English
Publication timeframe:
2 times per year
Journal Subjects:
Social Sciences, Communication Science, Mass Communication, Public and Political Communication
Journal RSS Feed