During the past several years, there have been many e-government trials in China. A salient government trial is that various government microblogs are set up to meet with the soaring citizen utilization of social media. The wave of Weibo in China, which is similar to hybrids of Twitter and Facebook, has swept the Chinese daily communication and social networks, simultaneously it also promoted the transformation of Chinese previous traditional public administrative style. Hence the research of government microblogging services is of critical significance which contribute to the motivations of this research: first, the emergence of interaction between public institutes and citizens is a newly-developed issue; second, monitoring on government microblogging may influence policy making; third, since its first occurrence, government microblogging in China has been a new practice of G2C interaction.
As latest studies on the topic of interaction through government microblogging in local China, especially those using empirical methods are rather rare. To bridge the research gap, this paper is structured to empirically explain the occurrence of interaction between public authorities and citizens on microblogging services in municipal China. Following this research objective, the main research question of this study is how the occurrence of interaction between public authorities and citizens on microblogging services can be explained. Three sub-questions were further generated to direct for the research: 1) what types of communication are existed between Chinese public authorities and citizens for microblogging services in China; 2) what are the differences and similarities (in terms of degree of interaction) between various organizations and citizens, and what are the explanatory variables for distinct interaction; 3) What explanation for the degree of interaction on public authorities’ microblogs can be formulated.
In order to address the above research questions on different issue levels from descriptive to interpretive and explanatory, this research uses a combined methodology package which consists of quantitative and qualitative approaches, including a content analysis of selected government microblogging accounts, expert consultation, case study as well as survey. As the central province of Hunan is a miniature of the nation for the practices of government microblogging, together with the accessibility and feasibility for the researchers, Hunan Province is aimed as the place for field work. Given the maturity and activity of government microblogging accounts, eight government accounts in relation to police and judicial were selected for content analysis to describe the general interaction patterns of government and citizens in this region.
By conducting an content analysis of 347 government microblogging messages as well as the affiliated comments, two initial findings were reached: 1) messages regarding agency publicity (both agency activities and agency institute) are more likely to receive responses from the government than those related to concrete government affairs (law enforcement, performance appraisal and administrative issuances); b) although the differentiation in the official instruction did not lead to salient differences in government response, the messages dealing with driving safety, anti-fraud, children safety and body safety stand out for replying to citizens’ comments at least once.
