Associating E-Government and E-Participation Indexes With Governmental Twitter Accounts Performance, In EU Countries

Abstract

The paper records government and ministries Twitter accounts for 24 EU countries. It records four indexes of Twitter performance: number of followers and following, number of tweets and number of tweets per day, and two indexes describing potential reach to citizens regarding the information tweeted by the accounts, to describe the specific accounts’ performance and influence. Two summary indexes are constructed using PCA: network characteristics and activity characteristics of the accounts. Correlations are calculated for all performance indexes with e-Government and e-Participation indexes of the 24 countries. Tweeting frequency and retweeting mentioning represent the accounts’ activity and the community activity, respectively. Only activity indexes are strongly correlated with e-Government and e-Participation, while number of followers and following seems not to be associated with them. Performance of the Twitter accounts is not only a matter of Twitter appearance and networking of the accounts; it is mainly a matter of citizens’ active participation.