Councils’ tweets ‘are falling on deaf ears’

councils in Yorkshire are failing to make the best use of social networking devices such as Twitter, according to a new study.

Researchers at Hull University looked at the Twitter accounts of 10 local authorities and found they were mainly being used to broadcast information and not to engage with people as the medium was intended.

The data collected from councils, including Leeds, Kirklees and Wakefield, looked at the number of followers, number of tweets, number of re-tweets, direction of communication, and analysis of content.

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The study found there was a low proportion of local residents registered as followers with council services, with Lincoln Council having the most at just 3.7 per cent.

In terms of council announcements via Twitter, the most popular reason for tweeting was to publicise entertainment, sport or leisure activities in the local area.

The most popular categories for responsive tweets centred on transport, entertainment, waste and housing services. Within these categories some councils made much more use of Twitter to engage individual residents.

Dr Darren Mundy, head of department at the school of arts and new media at the Scarborough campus, said: “The analysis demonstrates that the present use of Twitter as a mechanism for the public to engage is fairly limited. We have therefore provided a number of recommendations including understanding the channel, developing strategies to engage the citizen, the development of a social media policy, and integration with back end services.

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“The paper demonstrates a lack of true engagement with Twitter, where emphasis should be on the social, not on the use of the networks as primarily broadcast mechanisms. It demonstrates that engagement with the collection and analysis of social media data may help councils to gain a better understanding of citizen concerns in their local area.”