The post-adoption behaviors of government social media in China

Abstract

Lots of government agencies have adopted social media to enhance transparency, improve services, and facilitate interaction, but the implementation and impacts after their adoptions are not well documented in the existing literature. In this chapter, we use the case of China to examine the post-adoption behaviors of government social media. We reveal that government microblog in Sina Weibo is largely inactive and lack of concrete influences, despite a handful of accounts perform overwhelmingly well. Microblog is primarily used for one-way propaganda instead of two-way interaction, which undermines its potential of coproduction and cocreation. While social media are adopted, either voluntarily or mandatorily, their sustainable operations and maintenances are still problematic. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of the results.