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March 29, 2012 By News Staff
Seattle and New York City took the highest marks in a study released last week by the University of Illinois at Chicago ranking city government’s use of social media.
Four of the top 10 cities are located in California.
The United States’ 75 largest cities were ranked and analyzed from March through May 2011 for their online interactivity, transparency and accessibility by Karen Mossberger, head of the university’s public administration graduate program, and Yonghong Wu, an associate professor at the university.
The researchers used the data to compile the Civic Engagement Index and compared the metrics with findings from a similar study they conducted in 2009. According to Mossberger, the top-ranked cities have made technology more of a priority within their city.
“Seattle has long been an innovator in this area, with programs to address the digital divide online and offline. New York has long used the Web for transparency,” Mossberger said.
Facebook and Twitter were used by nearly nine out of 10 of the largest U.S. cities, according to the study’s 2011 findings. Among the 75 largest U.S. cities, 87 percent were using Twitter, compared to 25 percent in 2009. Facebook also was used by 87 percent, a big jump from only 13 percent in 2009. YouTube links appeared for 75 percent of major U.S. cities, up from 16 percent in 2009.
The top-10 cities were ranked using a percentage scoring system:
1. New York — 93.33 percent
1. Seattle — 93.33 percent
2. Virginia Beach, Va. — 90.43 percent
3. Portland, Ore. — 90 percent
4. San Francisco — 89.36 percent
5. Kansas City, Mo. — 87.23 percent
6. Denver — 86.67 percent
7. Mesa, Ariz. — 85.11 percent
8. Louisville, Ky. — 84.44 percent
9. Philadelphia — 84.04 percent
9. Long Beach, Calif. — 84.04 percent
9. Sacramento, Calif. — 84.04 percent
10. San Jose, Calif. — 82.98 percent
For the complete rankings and the full study, click here.
You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to
http://www.govtech.com/wireless/Best-Social-Media-Cities-2012.html
Does this mean "government using Facebook/Twitter to maintain contact with its citizens" or "government employees using Facebook/Twitter during office hours?"
I would like to see a similar study on local Government's (and Federal)success at designing Search Engine friendly websites so people can even find their internal pages. I suppose the list and score would be as high. :>/
Both. Remember when your teacher told you to ask your question out loud so that the entire class could hear the question and answer, that way the teacher wouldn't have to answer the same question a hundred times? This is what Facebook and Twitter allow local governments to do -respond to citizens' concerns in a medium that others can benefit from. It is a much better use of my employees' time (and the hollowed tax payer's dollar) for them to respond to a question once on Facebook than twenty times over the phone to every single question that comes into city hall. I really don't understand why the same people that want to have access to the world through their personal smart phone are so opposed to "government" making use of these social media tools.
The problem is there is now so much information on social web sites that you actually waste more time trying to weed through all the rhetoric to get to the real information. Even with it pushed to you it becomes ridiculous. For example I follow the VA and DOI and was following CNNNews. CNN tweeted so many retweets of their reporters that by the time I could read the VA and DOI info I had to scroll backwards about 20 pages. Yes picking who to follow is key but if your interests are varied it can be ludicrous to think it is working. Maybe in a few years things will flatten out, but for now, there are some who tweet and facebook just because....kind of like this post. :)
Social Media Endeavors of the Johnson City Tennessee Police Facebook www.facebook.com/johnsoncitypolice The department launched a facebook page on June 16, 2009. Since that time our facebook page has materialized into a fabulous tool for our public to communicate with us, and an invaluable mechanism for us to push out information to the citizenry. Any facebook post the JCPD pushes out has the potential to reach 624,602 individuals. Our weekly total reach is 5,252 individuals. We automatically post our departmental news releases, these go out to facebook at the same time the news outlets receive them. We also post live traffic crashes to our facebook site from our Twitter page. Twitter www.twitter.com/423JCPD Our Twitter page has enjoyed a great reception from the public. We have over 1,000 followers with an average of 2 new followers every day, have dispatched 4,022 tweets. And in conjunction with our Washington County Emergency Communications District (911) we provide real-time crash locations for the motoring public. These notifications allow the motorist to avoid traffic tie-ups and provide other event notices. Our news releases are also automatic to the Twitter site. News Release Page on Blogger. http://jcpd.blogspot.com/ The JCPD News Release and Information page is yet another highly utilized site. Over 265,000 pageviews. We average about 360 pageviews per day. Or near 12,000 per month.