Twitter data in public administration: a review of recent scholarship

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of understanding, analyzing and managing big data in the field of public administration. Design/methodology/approach It discusses the unique attributes of Twitter data and proposes a text-mining and analysis framework for conducting research using data on social networking sites. Furthermore, this paper reviews recent scholarship that collected and analyzed Twitter data to address public administration or policy issues. It examines what research questions have been addressed through analyzing Twitter data and how researchers collected and analyzed Twitter data. Findings It concludes that a more systematic process is needed for data collection, and more in-depth analysis is needed to better understand and utilize Twitter data for public administration. Originality/value This paper is one of the early attempts to synthesize and review the existing research that used Twitter data to address public administration issues.