HOW MACEDONIAN MUNICIPALITIES ARE USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR PUBLIC COMMUNICATION

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the way Macedonian municipalities use social media platforms for public communication and participation. Data have been collected through the process of observation and visual inspection of local government's presence on three social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The results from the data analysis confirmed that municipalities in Macedonia are mostly active on Facebook, followed by their activity on Twitter and YouTube. The visual inspection of the social media profiles of municipalities showed that citizens are not sufficiently engaged in public participation, especially when measures for commitment and virality are taken into consideration. The one way ANOVA confirmed significant relationship between the size of the municipality in terms of population and the level of social media activity measured as number of posts, tweets and video uploads. Therefore in the larger municipalities with greater population, which usually are more urban communities, local governments are more active on social media platforms. The study revealed that local governments need to develop and adopt а well managed social media strategy. The lack of integration of communication among different social media platforms and with the information posted on the municipality official website is evident. Most of the municipalities need to adopt social media strategy for public communication and to improve management of social media activity, in order to improve the public interaction with the citizens.