The Impact of Social Media use for Government Communication: The Case of Addis Ababa City Administration.
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2022-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis was to examine the impact of social media use for government communication by Addis Ababa city Administration. To meet the objectives of the study qualitative method was applied. As the technique gives the researcher the option to gather data firsthand from respondents through one-on-one interviews. And the approach is the most effective way of describing the features of a certain person or group of people it was used in the research. Data was collected by interviewing 11 department heads and officers that are directly participating in the communication activities of the city administration. Persons who participated in an interview were selected based on their duty of deciding on the city administration's communication content published on social media and other media outlets. And also documents and content published by the city government on social media and other media outlets from October 2021 to February 2022 were analyzed by the researcher. According to the finding of the study social media has an impact on the government communication of the Addis Ababa city Administration. It affected the overall communication activity of the city administration by influencing the content production, media usage, the implementation of different communication tools, and shifting the focus of communication departments from their mission. So these results show that the expansion and development of social media impacted the government communication practices of the Addis Ababa city Administration. In addition, the absence of clear direction, strategy, and guidance in which the city administration’s social media usage was led affected the communication practices of inappropriate usage of the social media platforms the city administration. further more While the main social media pages that are administered by the city administration are concentrating on publishing content that is out of their mission to increase their viewability, the platforms of sub-cities and Woredas are also following their path, by copying them. Concentrating on publishing counter messages for content published on other social media pages also affects the effectiveness of the communication practices. As social media becomes the most dominant tool in communication practices lack of utilizing the available dominant social media platforms by city administration also affects the effectiveness of government communication practices.
Key words: social media, government communication, social media impact, Addis Ababa city
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social media, government communication