Transparency, participation, cooperation: a case study evaluating Twitter as a social media interaction tool in the US open government initiative

Abstract

The first official order of business carried out by US President Obama in 2008 was presenting a memorandum entitled the Open Government Initiative. The three pillars of transparency, participation and collaboration form the foundation for the initiative. Our study analyzed the use of social media as one of the means being employed to achieve these goals by conducting a case-study of one government agency, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). While most of the agencies who are officially participating in the Initiative provide links to some sort of social media on their homepages, we question whether this actually results in increased transparency, participation and collaboration. We used a mixed-methods approach based in grounded theory, content analysis and discourse analysis. Early findings suggest that although the USDA is explicitly mentioned in the tweets there is no clear evidence of discourse, in the sense of exchange of tweets between the USDA and other Twitterers. This is assuming that anyone who may post from the USDA would do so overtly via the auspices of the organization and not as an individual with a unique user name. Our research indicates that traditional definitions of these terms may need to be expanded to account for the types of interactions occurring via social media. In this paper, we report on our research plan and initial observations.