Can a Government Use Social Media to Support Disadvantaged Citizens?

The Web2.0 has transformed online interactions. In particular, there are an increasing number of online support groups in which people in similar situations can offer each other both informational and emotional support. In some cases, these groups are also attended by experts who can both monitor the groups and provide tailored information. In our work, we investigated whether an online support group could be used by the government to provide support to disadvantaged citizens. We designed, implemented and deployed a secure online community, in which government staff served as moderators and information providers. The aim of the community was to provide its members with informational and emotional support, and we hoped that this support would come from both the moderators and the community members. In this paper, we present the findings of a qualitative analysis of the community forum to see if the community achieved its goal. The analysis was done by first manually annotating the forum posts for speech acts, topics and emotions. We found that the community achieved its aims. In addition, we observed that community members found the support they received welcome and useful, and, importantly, it enabled them to feel heard by the government.