How can you bring citizens closer to their city councils?

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze the relationship between city councils and citizens through social media to determine which variables affect the city council’s activity on social media and citizens’ engagement. We perform a comparative study of 17 city councils throughout Spain, one for each region’s most populated municipality. The methodology used is quantitative and content analysis of interactions on social media between citizens and local government. We collect the data from social media, analyzing X (formerly Twitter) posts of the city councils selected before municipal elections held in May 2023. We considered reach, creation policy, responsiveness, media type and content topic in the posts published on the city council’s X (formerly Twitter) account. Results shows that quantity of publication doesn’t always translate to efficacy in terms of citizen engagement and that smaller cities tend to publish less tweets daily, but in average have more reach (view counts) and engagement (Likes, comments and retweets). In term of transparency, results show no relationship with engagement. Its practical contribution stems from best municipalities performance identification that are used for benchmarking purposes, and those who can ameliorate their engagement index.