Sharing Followers in e-Government Twitter Accounts: The Case of Greece
Abstract
:1. Introduction
- Section 2 reports on the related work on the use of social media and especially Twitter in e-government;
- Section 3 presents the recorded data and a brief reference to the analysis that follows;
- Section 4 provides descriptive statistics of the data and it introduces the use of an association rules approach as a complementary descriptive technique for large data sets. Next, a statistical approach is introduced in order to describe patterns of accounts that share followers. Findings are presented and discussed. The method aims to provide groupings of accounts by measuring similarities between accounts regarding the followers they share. By locating such groups of Twitter accounts, it may be easier to understand what the citizens’ habits are regarding how they choose to follow Twitter accounts and use the particular information sources.
2. Related Work
2.1. e-Government and Social Media
2.2. Twitter in e-Government
3. Data Collection and Description
- How many citizens follow each account?
- How many of them follow more than one account?
- How many accounts share followers?
- What are the combinations of accounts that are followed by the same followers?
- Do followers choose which accounts to follow by means of the accounts’ thematic similarity?
Name | Description | Intended purpose (target audience) | Followers | Percentage of followers that also follow other accounts |
---|---|---|---|---|
HCoastGuard | Official account of the Greek coastguard. | Information Provision (G2C) | 1,522 | 88% |
Diavgeia | Account of the Greek Ministry of Administrative Reform and e-government, which aims to achieve maximum publicity of government policy (Ministry of Interior). | Information Provision, Consultation (G2C) | 2,256 | 91% |
Digitalgreece | Digital Greece 2020 Forum. | Community Building/Collaborative Environments,
Information Provision, Consultation (G2C, G2B) | 469 | 77% |
DigiPlanGR | Secretariat for Digital Planning. | Information Provision (G2C, G2B) | 738 | 91% |
e_ekpaideusi | Operational Programme for Education and Lifelong Learning from the Greek Ministry of Education. | Information Provision (G2C, G2B) | 77 | 78% |
Madcgr | Operational Programme from General Secretariat for Telecommunications and Postal services. | Information Provision (G2C, G2B) | 24 | 83% |
Gsaeedu | Greek General Secretariat of Lifelong Learning (Ministry of Education). | Information Provision (G2C, G2B) | 20 | 60% |
GGMEofficial | Official Twitter account of the General Secretariat of the Media. | Information Provision, References (G2C, G2B) | 76 | 79% |
GGNeasGenias | General Secretariat for youth. | Information Provision (G2C) | 2,392 | 87% |
Gsis_gov_gr | The official channel of the General Secretariat for Information Systems of the Ministry of Finance. | Information Provision
G2C, G2B, G2G | 733 | 73% |
PressParliament | Press and Parliamentary Reporting from Greek Parliament. | Information Provision (G2C) | 508 | 89% |
Govgr | The official account of the Greek Government website. | Information Provision (G2C) | 15,931 | 89% |
Hellenicpolice | Official account of Hellenic police. | Information Provision (G2C) | 31,423 | 69% |
HellasYAP | Service that aims to implement the government policy for the introduction, implementation and development of information and technology in the public sector (Greek Ministry of Administrative Reform and e-government). | Information Provision (G2G) | 9 | 100% |
MinDevGR | Official account of the Greek Ministry of Development. | Information Provision (G2C) | 5,312 | 95% |
GreeceMFA | Official account of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. | Information Provision (G2C) | 19,586 | 77% |
Yyka_gov | Official account of the Greek Ministry of Health. | Information Provision (G2C) | 1,681 | 82% |
Minfingr | Official account of the Greek Ministry of Finance. | Information Provision (G2C) | 11 | 73% |
Yp_Paideias | Account with RSS feeds from the Greek Ministry of Education. | Information Provision (G2C) | 1,785 | 76% |
YPEKA | Official account of the Greek Ministry of Environment. | Information Provision (G2C) | 3,362 | 82% |
OpenGovGr | Official account of the Greek Ministry of Administrative Reform and e-government. | Information Provision, Consultation (G2C) | 8,573 | 92% |
PrimeministerGR | Account of the Prime Minister of the Hellenic Republic. | Information Provision (G2C) | 56,804 | 45% |
Pyrosvestiki | Official Twitter account of the Fire Brigade. | Information Provision (G2C) | 15,636 | 83% |
Synigoros | Mediate between citizens and public services for the protection of civil rights and the fight against maladministration (independent authority). | Information Provision, Mediation (G2C) | 1,802 | 75% |
StartupGreece | Online information and networking space, aiming to help create a new generation of entrepreneurs in Greece (Ministry of Development). | Information Provision, Collaborative Environments (G2B) | 6,035 | 63% |
VisitGreecegr | The official Twitter account of the Greek National Tourism Organization. | Information Provision (G2C, G2B) | 22,707 | 40% |
Synigkatanaloti | Account of an independent authority, which assumes inexpensive mediation to amicably resolve consumer disputes with suppliers of goods or services. | Information Provision, Mediation (G2C) | 38 | 71% |
Median | 1,785 | 79% | ||
Average (SD) | 7,389 (12,876) | 78% (14%) |
4. Analysis and Findings
4.1. Descriptive Statistics
4.2. An Association Rules Approach
Category | Accounts | Min | Q1 | M | Q3 | Max | Mean number of followers (SD) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | HCoastGuard, Diavgeia, GGNeasGenias, Govgr, Hellenicpolice, MinDevGR, GreeceMFA, Yyka_gov, YPEKA, OpenGovGr, Pyrosvestiki, PrimeministerGR, Synigoros, VisitGreecegr | 2 | 6 | 7 | 9 | 13 | 13,499 (15,671) |
2 | Yp_Paideias, StartupGreece | 2 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 13 | 3,910 (3,005) |
3 | DigiPlanGR | 2 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 12 | 738 |
4 | Gsis_gov_gr, PressParliament | 2 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 11 | 621 (159) |
5 | Digitalgreece | 2 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 10 | 469 |
6 | GGMEofficial | 2 | 2.75 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 76 |
7 | e_ekpaideusi | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 77 |
8 | Synigkatanaloti | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 38 |
4.3. A Multivariate Statistical Approach
Twitter account A | Sum | ||
---|---|---|---|
Twitter account B | # common followers of A and B = α | # followers of B, but not A = b | # followers of B = a + b |
# followers of A, but not B = c | # not followers of A or B = d | # not followers of B = c + d | |
Sum | # followers of A = a + c | # not followers of A = b + d | Total = a + b + c + d |
5. Conclusions
- (1)
- It provided numbers of followers for each account. Some accounts are very popular regarding the number of followers, while others have only a few followers. Accounts of services regarding public order, the Prime Minister and promotion of Greek tourism are followed by many citizens;
- (2)
- While some citizens follow only one account, there are many citizens who follow several accounts. There exist groups of up to thirteen out of twenty seven accounts that share followers. To answer how many followers follow more than one account, the paper presented detailed counts of followers that follow just one or more than one account;
- (3)
- Accounts that share followers are presented in the findings of the association rules approach. The distributions of the number of accounts that every account shares followers with is displayed and discussed;
- (4)
- Cluster analysis produced groups of accounts that are followed by the same followers;
- (5)
- The analysis of the intended purpose and the content of the accounts that are clustered together show that followers choose which accounts to follow by means of the accounts’ thematic similarity. Accounts regarding education, public order and digital services are clustered together, since they share common followers. We may conclude that, to a certain extent, people choose to follow accounts of the shame orientation, content or use.
Author Contributions
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Zafiropoulos, K.; Antoniadis, K.; Vrana, V. Sharing Followers in e-Government Twitter Accounts: The Case of Greece. Future Internet 2014, 6, 337-358. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi6020337
Zafiropoulos K, Antoniadis K, Vrana V. Sharing Followers in e-Government Twitter Accounts: The Case of Greece. Future Internet. 2014; 6(2):337-358. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi6020337
Chicago/Turabian StyleZafiropoulos, Kostas, Konstantinos Antoniadis, and Vasiliki Vrana. 2014. "Sharing Followers in e-Government Twitter Accounts: The Case of Greece" Future Internet 6, no. 2: 337-358. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi6020337