Do Municipal Facebook Performance and Citizen Satisfaction go Hand in Hand?

Abstract

This paper examines the relation between municipalities’ social media performance and citizen satisfaction with the municipality. An observational study was conducted, based on four different Swedish national public data sources. The study shows that municipalities’ Facebook performance is correlated to citizens’ satisfaction with living in the municipality and with satisfaction with municipal service provision. There was however no significant relationship between Facebook performance and satisfaction with transparency and influence from a citizen perspective. In conclusion, one important implication of the study is that citizen perception regarding whether a municipality is a good place to live in or not is relat‑ed to the use of social media for promoting the municipality. Furthermore, a relation between satisfaction and citizen perception of government service performance implies that social media could be valuable for interaction and co‑creation. Finally, an implication is that usage of social media and the potential relationship to trust, influence and transparency must be further elaborated and studied. Overall, our recommendation is that municipalities and their citizens may benefit from well thought‑out strategies of how to use social media for marketing, interaction and co‑creating.