Social Media & Government

As you know from my introduction, I'm very interested in communication in the public sector. The GovFresh blog from this week's course readings provides a pretty deep resource for learning about how Social Media is being used by governments and other public agencies, but it may be overwhelming at first.

For those looking for a shorter, quicker primer on why governments are interested in social media, check out this post from dotgov. The site also has some other interesting articles, including one on how City Councils can use Facebook.

Social Media Gone Physical?

Today one of our students mentioned the idea of museum kiosks as social media. While not as connecting as social media, there certainly are aspects of this notion that relate to the future of social media. Recently, on GovFresh, Kevin Curry talked about the digital divide and how it limits the impacts of social media on the transparency of government. He mentioned some similar "Real World" social media outlets as a possible solution:

The basic idea is to place LED signs at heavily trafficked locations. These signs would display information about the city in which people are most interested. Some of this content would be generated the city and some of the content would be generated by citizens. Information, especially that generated by citizens, would vary somewhat by neighborhood.

On the participation side of the conversation the minimum barrier to entry would be a mobile phone. Anyone who can send a text message can contribute. Of course, there would be other ways to contribute. On the information side of the equation would be these message boards. This would be a way for people to simultaneously tell their city what they want and to see what the city is getting by way of feedback.

For more on this fascinating idea, see the original post here.