Comparing Citizens' Concerns and Values Expressed in Social Media, Citizen Survey, and Administrative Data

Citizen participation today can be done through diverse channels. While traditional townhall meetings are still important, most citizens do not want to spare time during the day or in the evenings to attend hours of meetings... [ view full abstract ]

Citizen participation today can be done through diverse channels. While traditional townhall meetings are still important, most citizens do not want to spare time during the day or in the evenings to attend hours of meetings to discuss city policies and suggest necessary changes in programs.  Instead, they are more likely to call the city phone line or use the city website to request for services and complain about city policies and community issues through emailing their officials.  Also, more citizens, especially the younger ones, like to talk about community concerns and policy issues through the social media. 

Using about 90,000 complaint and service request cases annually, about 60,000 police incidence data annually, as well as more than 600,000 pieces of Twitter data and about 10,000 responses of quarterly resident surveys from Kansas City, Missouri in the U.S. in 2012 – 2014, this paper analyzes how community local residents like to express their opinions and concerns about public safety through different communicative platforms.   Based on the findings, the paper discusses how the analytics of different types of citizen data can be used to enhance the effectiveness and responsiveness of policymaking and program management.  It also examines the limitations of these tools and suggests how social media data and traditional administrative data should be used carefully to complement each other in policymaking and program management.