Local governments’ communication on social media platforms: refining and assessing patterns of adoption in Belgium
| Published date | 01 March 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523221133229 |
| Author | Vincent Mabillard,Raphael Zumofen,Martial Pasquier |
| Date | 01 March 2024 |
Local governments’
communication on social
media platforms: refining
and assessing patterns of
adoption in Belgium
Vincent Mabillard
Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Raphael Zumofen
University of Lausanne and HES-SO Valais-Wallis, Switzerland
Martial Pasquier
University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Abstract
This article relies on the literature on technology adoption and empirical studies on
social media adoption in the public sector to analyze the case of Belgian municipalities.
Our objective is threefold as we aim to:(a) provide a new approach to assess theadop-
tion of social media platforms by governments, (b) describe the current situation in
Belgium through the concept of “active adoption”and (c) determine the main factors
that relate to the uptake of Facebook in Belgian municipalities over 10,000 inhabitants.
To achieve these objectives, we used software to retrieve quantitative data regarding
Facebook adoption and institutionalization. Our results reveal that municipality size,
median age and longevity on the platform are positively associated with the adoption
of Facebook. In contrast, median income is, surprisingly, negatively associated with sev-
eral dimensions of active adoption. These findings contribute to the literature on the
factors related to social media use. In addition, the new ways of uncovering social
media adoption and institutionalization patterns provide a solid conceptual approach
for future research. For practitioners, our study provides municipalities with a better
Corresponding author:
Vincent Mabillard, Université Libre de Bruxelles –Solvay Brussels School of Economic & Management, Avenue
F.D. Roosevelt 42 Brussels Bruxelles 1050, Belgium.
Email: vincent.mabillard@ulb.be
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2024, Vol. 90(1) 65–81
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523221133229
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
assessment framework and offers them a new model to evaluate social media adoption,
underlining the fundamental difference between registration and “active adoption”.
Points for practitioners
This article provides a new approach to assess social media adoption and institutional-
ization patterns in public organizations. It offers a framework to evaluate social media
adoption, underlining the fundamental difference between registration and ‘active adop-
tion’. It also identifies the main factors that relate to the uptake of Facebook in Belgian
municipalities over 10,000 inhabitants: population size, median age, median income and
social media-related variables –that is, activity on Twitter and Instagram –as well as lon-
gevity on the platform.
Keywords
Belgium, municipalities, social media, technology adoption
Introduction
Recently, there has been considerable growth of electronic government (e-government)
projects using information and communications technology (ICTs) for service delivery
and the provision of information. ICTs typically promote interconnectivity between gov-
ernments and various stakeholders, and foster transparency and accountability processes
(Guillamón et al., 2016; Picazo-Vela et al., 2012). Like any technological innovation,
social media influence user behavior in terms of information seeking and use (Zheng
and Zheng, 2014). The perceived value of social media in potentially lowering the bar
to communicating with citizens has led to the adoption of social media by diverse
public sector organizations (Faber et al., 2020). However, adoption differs from simple
registration and use, and there exists a great variety of approaches to social media adop-
tion and activity measurement. Despite the growing discussion about social media tech-
nologies, there is little evidence on social media adoption and usage (Wirtz et al. 2020).
This article contributes to the strand of research on digital communication of public
sector organizations. More precisely, it aims at assessing the adoption patterns of
social media platforms in Belgium through the analysis of the Facebook accounts of
all municipalities with over 10,000 inhabitants. In this regard, our study contributes to
the public administration (PA) literature on social media adoption and institutionalization
in three ways. First, from a theoretical standpoint, it distinguishes registration from what
we will call here “active adoption”: indeed, creating a social media account does not
represent a real and complete adoption process in many cases. Second, it proposes a
methodological approach to measure this “active adoption”of social media platforms
through variables mobilized in several technology adoption models. And third, it elabo-
rates on the factors that may relate to such active adoption at the local level, including a
unique dataset of socio-demographic, economic and political variables in the
66 International Review of Administrative Sciences 90(1)
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