The Communication of Public Administration in Social Networks: The Case of the Cities of Buenos Aires and Bologna

Abstract

The article delves into management models, communicative proposal and the strategies of the government to engage with citizens on social networks, more than half a decade of incorporating the resources of Web 2.0 in the official communication from the governmental institutions, through the case study two local urban authorities were compared, Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Bologna (Italy). From a perspective focused on opposing paradigms "conversational-unidirectional" and "open-closed", the research includes the publication criteria used by the responsible official accounts of each of the cities, as well as grammar of the messages and subjects and themes that connect them. In turn, it analyzes the contents of the publications of the institutional accounts of both cities on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for a period of six weeks between the months of October and December 2014, elaborated and classified in categories in order to show the recognition level and empowerment of users as citizens. The diversity of communicative proposals observed among the cases studied raises questions about the definition of "good social practices" and a need to delve into the actual margins held by public authorities for the exploitation of the possibilities of interaction that interactive platforms offer.