Community Diversity and Social Media Use in Local Governments

• Published date: 01 November 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997241279294
• Author: Yongjin Ahn,Jaehee Jong
• Date: 01 November 2024

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997241279294

Administration & Society

2024, Vol. 56(9-10) 1083 –1103

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997241279294

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Article

Community Diversity

and Social Media Use in

Local Governments

Yongjin Ahn1 and Jaehee Jong2

Abstract

Compared to its ubiquity, social media use remains a divisive topic in the

public sector. While local governments have increasingly adopted social

media to increase civic engagement, many are still hesitant. Among the

many factors that may have influenced the adoption of social media in local

governance, we argue that community diversity deserves more attention.

This study theorizes the relationship between local governments’ use of

social media and community diversity. We examine this relationship within

the context of township governments, which is an understudied area of

research in public administration. The results indicate that community

diversity is related to an increase in social media use. We discuss the

theoretical and practical implications of our findings and suggest fruitful

avenues of inquiry in public administration social media research.

Keywords

social media use, community diversity, local government administration

Local governments are increasingly using social media as a means to commu-

nicate with their constituents (Mergel, 2017). In the early stages of adoption,

departments designated single public officers to update or post announcements:

1Korea University Sejong Campus, Sejong, Republic of Korea

2Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jaehee Jong, Northern Illinois University, 1425 W. Lincoln Hwy., DeKalb, IL 60115-2828, USA.

Email: jjong@niu.edu

1279294AAS0010.1177/00953997241279294Administration & SocietyAhn and Jong

research-article2024

1084 Administration & Society 56(9-10)

it was a one-way communication tool (Ellison & Hardey, 2014). More recently,

as the use of social media evolved, local governments began to diversify strate-

gies and use social media to better respond to their residents’ various needs.

Compared to its ubiquity, however, social media use remains a divisive

topic in the public sector. Although many local governments have adopted

social media to increase civic engagement, others are still hesitant.

Accordingly, a growing body of literature examines the effectiveness of

social media and Information Communication Technology (ICT) (Campbell

et al., 2014), along with studies that identify factors of social media adop-

tion among local governments (Gao & Lee, 2017; Oliveira & Welch, 2013).

Nevertheless, much more needs to be explored about how local govern-

ments are adopting social media and the extent to which citizens are becom-

ing engaged (Mossberger et al., 2013).

Among the many factors that may influencelocal governments to adopt

social media, we argue that community diversity deserves more attention.

Although community diversity is identified as one of the most critical deter-

minants of civic action (King et al., 2011; Longhofer et al., 2019; Melamed

et al., 2020), few have linked it with how it affects local government strate-

gies in dealing with various demands of residents. This study analysis aims to

bridge two streams of scholarship: social media governance and community

diversity.

The primary goal of the study is to probe how community diversity is

related to local governments’ social media use. Drawing from the civic

engagement literature, we theorize that community diversity – racial/ethnic

and socio-economic heterogeneity – leads to an increase in social media use

among local governments. The underlying intuition is that increased hetero-

geneity is associated with difficulty in reconciling individual preferences and

engenders collective action problems (Qu & Paarlberg, 2022). Although local

civic action decreases as a function of racial diversity and income inequality,

as noted by Putnam (2000) and Tocqueville (2003), local governments care

about constituents’ needs, and therefore adopt social media as a complemen-

tary means of governance, especially in diverse areas.

We test our expectation in the context of township governments—a unit of

local government in the U.S. Township governments provide an interesting

context for examining the relationship between community diversity and

social media use because of the distinctive nature of service operations and

task environments. In what follows, we provide a brief background of town-

ship governments. To examine the relationship between community diversity

and social media use, we employ data from a survey that was sent to 218

officials who work for township governments in Illinois. In addition to the

survey, we use census data and data from social media webpages of township