Yesterday, I created the first #FedTweets Twitter network and shared the relatively sparse initial set of connections. It included only the organizers and speakers and a few others who were talking about the webinar and advertising it to their own networks.

Today, Justin Herman (Phase One Consulting), Scott Horvath (Web and Social Media Chief at USGS), Tammie Marcoullier (Program Manager Challenge.gov at GSA), and Stacey Palosky (Public Affairs Officer at U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) presented their insights on how they use Twitter in their agencies. The presenters encouraged the participants to heavily use the #FedTweets hashtag and keep the conversation going beyond the one hour live encounter.

Here is the result (network created with NodeXL):

FedTweets_PartII, a photo by inesmergel on Flickr.

I created the network among those Twitter users who started to use a new hashtag on Twitter called #FedTweets. This a conversation that was started in preparation for GSA’s webinar on January 26, 2012 (http://www.howto.gov/training/classes/engaging-audiences-with-Twitter).

Right now it’s clearly a closed network and messages are not widely distributed.

I will recreate this network again tomorrow after the seminar and it will be interesting to see if more users pick up on the use of the hashtag and become part of the conversation.

As I am sitting in Marc Smith’s social media network analysis workshop, I had a few aha-moments. One of them was his Twitter network of the Gates Foundation’s network on Twitter (see figure from Marc’s Flickr account below).

This connects nicely with the GHAPP project I am working on to understand how successful different topic networks in the global public health community are. Gates plays a huge role – depending on their funding decisions, organizations decide what they focus their work.

What the network shows is that Gates serves as a broadcaster (see the star network on the left side around Gates Twitter account), but does not help to encourage the community to actively connect with each other. Ties are not reciprocated and there are very little interactions among the overall community.

Here is Marc’s announcement from the SMRF blog:

I will speak and lead a workshop on social media network analysis at Syracuse University on the 19th and 20th of January, 2012.

Ines Mergel is my host.  Prof. Mergel is Assistant Professor of Public Administration, Department of Public Administration and International Affairs, and a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Technology and Information Policy at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, NY.

I will speak about the patterns we are finding in the data collected and analyzed by NodeXL.

 

My personal research interest in this workshop is to analyze observable social media tactics of government organizations and triangulate the data with qualitative data I collected from interviews with social media professionals in government. Social media network analysis can help to gain insights into the reuse of information published by government agencies, the structure of their followers and the pathways messages take through a Twitter or Facebook network. My idea is to trace impact and effectiveness of government engagement on social media applications beyond quantitative numbers of followers or messages.

Marc has recently analyzed the #MyResearch Twitter hashtag I started to follow that was initiated by Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega @raulpacheco, at UBC. Academics started to use the hashtag a few days ago and messages indicate that by connecting through a common hashtag people started to talk about joint research interests and may start collaborations:

From the White House blog:

The new effort calls for reports, by each agency head, describing their current plans for improving records management programs; outlining current obstacles to sound, cost-effective records management policies;and cataloging potential reforms and improvements. The agency reports will inform, and be followed, by a Records Management Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB and the National Archivist. The Directive will focus on maintaining accountability to the American public through documenting agency actions; increasing efficiency (and thus reducing costs); and switching, where feasible, from paper-based records to electronic records. In addition, all statutes, regulations, and policies must be reviewed to improve government-wide practices in records management.

Full memorandum is available here and on Scribd via Fedscoop:

Abstract:

How do decentralized systems deal with innovation? In particular, how do they aggregate the myriad experiences of their component parts, facilitate diffusion of information, and encourage investments in innovation? This is a classic problem in the study of human institutions. It is also one of the biggest challenges that exists in the governance of decentralized systems: How do institutions shape individual behavior around solving problems and sharing information in a fashion that is reasonably compatible with collective well-being? We use a particular decentralized institution (the U.S. House of Representatives), wrestling with a novel problem (how to utilize the Internet), to explore the implications of three archetypical principles for organizing collective problem solving: market, network, and hierarchy.

Reference:

Lazer, David; Mergel, Ines; Ziniel, Curtis; Esterling, Kevin; Neblo, Michael (2011): The Multiple Institutional Logics of Innovation, in: International Public Management Journal, 14:3, pp. 311-340, doi: 10.1080/10967494.2011.618308.

Leave a comment in case you would like to read the electronic copy of the article!

I am participating in book project that is featured over on the “Policy Informatics” blog. Here is the abstract for my chapter to be published in 2012:

The use of social media applications has become acceptable practice and is adopted by many government agencies. Public sector organizations are experimenting with the use of Facebook pages to represent their agency, Twitter for short updates, Wikis for collaborative co-production of content, YouTube and Flickr to share and incorporate videos and photos, online contests and challenges to access innovative ideas and solutions from government’s diverse audiences, or collaborative practices on virtual worlds such as Second Life. The main strategy of current observable use of social media applications is targeted toward broadcasting and educating government’s audiences – pushing information out, instead of actively integrating innovative knowledge extracted out of interactions on social media channels.

Managing the influx of innovative knowledge that flows into government and between government agencies through social media channels has posed unsolvable challenges for government. It is unclear how knowledge provided by the public is incorporated into new policies, change perceptions of citizens about the degree of responsiveness, accountability or transparency of government, or otherwise impact the effectiveness and efficiency of government’s standard operating procedures. What prevents the incorporation of innovative knowledge into government are two main barriers: First, the current information paradigm formulated in form of press-release style communication missions prevents active incorporation of innovative knowledge. Second, information vetting processes are not designed for bi-directional knowledge flows. This chapter provides insights into effective knowledge incubation mechanisms that emerged in some selected pockets of government. It highlights measurement mechanisms for effective knowledge incubation of each of the social media channels and innovative initiatives are presented.

Looking at the shear number of users, with about 25 million users Google+ has not yet reached maturity nor can it truly compete with the over 800 million users subscribed to Facebook. Over 500 million users return to Facebook on a daily basis and it has the most mature social sharing model – including third party pages, such as social sharing functions of what users read on the Internet (see for example the Washington Post’s social reading applications), what kind of music people are listening to (see for example Facebook’s newest addition Spotify) or other content that users find interesting and are willing to broadcast to their network of friends.

Foursquare – an application that allows users to broadcast their geo-location to their friends (similar to the places function on Facebook) is still restricted to users with smartphones and in my opinion a niche network with a huge future potential.

What the infographic is missing is that many users are using a combination of all of these services – check-ins on Foursquare can be automatically broadcasted to Twitter and Facebook. Twitter retweets or updates go out automatically to Facebook – catering to both networks at the same time. In addition, other type of content such as blog posts can be automatically distributed through the networked blogs function to Facebook and Twitter and Google+.

What is more interesting to look at is how people actually use these different channels. Here is my suggestion for government agencies and departments on how to use the different channels:

1. Use Facebook for frequent updates to reach people where they login on a daily basis – and most likely want to receive all their news. Allow comments among your followers and subscribers – increase your own social awareness on topics that arise.
2. Use Twitter for short updates to pull people to the content you want them to see on your own website. Also use it to provide information on your specialty area. Listen in to conversations on issues that might be of (current or future) concern of your agency – understand who the actors are and be prepared to be part of the conversation. In addition, Twitter is a great tool for timely updates, react to rumors and to provide the correct information.
3. Take a look at NARA’s use of Foursquare for first ideas on how to incorporate a location-based social networking service into a mission-focused tool.
4. LinkedIn has proven to be a successful tool for professional discussions around issues that people would like to take out of their (private/personal) Facebook environments and want to discuss with their peers in a professional environment. For that matter, GovLoop provides a highly interactive environment and an audience of over 50,000 public sector professionals as well.