Local governments on Facebook: What content encourages citizen participation and what type of municipalities post it the most?

Abstract

This paper addresses the subject of citizens' participation through social networks pages of local governments. Specifically, it aims at identifying if there is an association between content types published by local governments and the levels of participation they generate, and if there is a common set of characteristics among local governments that privilege publishing those types of contents. To support the study, all posts published in Facebook by 84 Portuguese local governments during November 2021 were registered and analyzed, making up a total of 6,897 posts that received 25,761 comments and 432,031 likes. Data was analyzed resorting to an indirect indicator of reactive participation based on the ratio between the number of comments and the number of likes generated by each content type. T-Tests were then used to assess which types of municipalities privilege publishing such contents. The main findings are that content categories related to typical local government competencies (such as Municipal works, Housing, and Mobility, traffic, and parking) and related to the political activity at the local level (such as Mayor, City Hall, City Council, and Participation initiatives) are more likely to encourage the participation of citizens than other types of content; and that municipalities located in more developed regions and with voter turnouts below the average are more likely to publish these types of contents.