Letizia Lo Presti

From citizens to partners: the role of social media content in fostering citizen engagement

This paper examines the communication modalities on Twitter to broadcast content to citizens and measures the effectiveness of the posted content in activating the citizens’ political participation proposing an retweetability rate.,Through content analysis of the European Commissioners’ posts, this paper identifies the most used communication modalities to broadcast content to the citizens. A retweetability rate is proposed to measure the effectiveness of the posted content in activating the political citizens’ engagement. The methodology is applied to the tweets posted by European Commissioners, who are currently facing democracy legitimation issues and Euroscepticism.,Empirical results show that Twitter is not fully used yet as a citizen engagement tool. However, the paper highlights the potentiality of Twitter to broadcast contents of value and build a relationship of citizens and institutions.,Measuring citizen engagement based on the posted messages can help the institutions to evaluate the effectiveness of the posted social media content. Moreover, the paper gives suggestions regarding how governments might implement social media content capable of fostering a dialogic communication with citizens.,A measurement of citizen engagement permits the identification of which kinds of public communication stimulate the engagement and favor a closer bond between citizens and public institutions.

Social Media Mix in the University Communication Plan: A Bridge Towards Public Engagement: Structured Abstract

The role of Higher Education in the social context has been always object of debate within the academic community and not only. Universities have always been responsible for the traditional functions of education and knowledge transfer but, across all the European countries, a “Third Mission” imposes to universities to be also a “partner” that collaborates at the community’s growth. In this sense, social networks can be a tool to create an effective bridge between research, teaching, and public services by means of the possibility of sharing information, opinions, and ideas in real time and in a multimedia way. This research investigates which forms of social media communication are mainly used by the European Universities to engage their own stakeholders by performing a comparative analysis of the posts in Twitter and Facebook. Furthermore, this research deals with the problem of gauging the engagement rate in the University by means of social network advancing the current state-of-the-art about the analysis of the social media use within public engagement strategies.

Approaches to university public engagement in the online environment: Insights from Anglo-Saxon higher education

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the construct of online public engagement by identifying the modalities universities use to give visibility to their approach on institutional websites.,An exploratory factor analysis outlined the principle dimensions that explain online public engagement starting from the analysis of a sample of American and English universities. To finish, a t-test shows the differences in the approaches to online public engagement in the sample universities.,The results of this analysis show that the construct of public engagement used for online communication has been investigated through three dimensions and that the American and English universities have different approaches in its declination.,The analysis was conducted on a sample of American and English universities; however the study underlines the fact that the traditional approaches to public engagement can assume different connotations for online communication.,Coherent organization of the online communication of public engagement activities can reinforce the perception of the university in the eyes of both internal and external stakeholders. For this reason, research offers interesting input for evaluating which kind of strategy should be adopted for online public engagement in line with the desired positioning and as defined by the governing bodies of the university institutions. However, the universities still need to institutionalize public engagement.,This work constitutes the first attempt to investigate public engagement in the university context through the web, using quantitative methodologies in order to highlight the different strategic orientations and operative declinations.

Web Communication Strategy and University Public Engagement: An Extended Abstract

Public engagement is a topic greatly debated in higher education (Watermeyer 2015; Davies 2013a, b). Universities are asked for a stronger commitment towards the society needs in order to encourage economic regeneration, enterprise growth, and community wellness. Recently, many government institutions have promoted community-oriented activities that involve both the territory and the surrounding universities.

Comunicazione e citizen engagement. L’esperienza dell’Unione Europea attraverso i social network

La ricerca indaga la comunicazione degli organi istituzionali dell’UE attraverso Twitter al fine di individuare quali modalita generano un maggior coinvolgimento dei cittadini. Inoltre, attraverso la ricostruzione dell’ampia letteratura presente sul tema e dei filoni di ricerca piu innovativi, l’indagine proposta offre un significativo contributo teorico agli studi che analizzano il ruolo dei social media nelle politiche europee di citizen engagement. Sulla base dei risultati ottenuti dall’analisi del contenuto di un campione di tweets postati dai Commissari Europei, si identificano le categorie di comunicazione che maggiormente stimolano la partecipazione e si forniscono indicazioni sulle strategie di comunicazione istituzionale dirette a coinvolgere il cittadino europeo.