Perceptions of the UAE's Government Communicators Regarding Social Media Roles

Abstract

Governmental and nonprofit agencies have been increasingly reconsidering the roles of social media communicators for strategic communication to ensure they accurately perceive their roles. A questionnaire and interviews were conducted with various social media communicators in the UAE to identify the practitioners' perceptions of using social media in government communication and the influencing factors on their roles. A set of roles was created based on the literature and theory to explore the social media communicators' roles. The statistical methods include descriptive statistics, factor analysis, correlations, and T-test. This study demonstrates that four factors describe the various roles of SMCs in the UAE as follows: (1) government advocates, (2) information and image disseminators, (3) research and services providers, and (4) online community builders. To some extent, these roles overlap with previous roles identified.