The Practice of Government Public Relations, 2nd Edition

7Harnessing Social Media Effectively on Behalf of Governments

Kara Alaimo

Government public relations practitioners are increasingly using social media to communicate, build relationships with critical constituencies, and attempt to enhance the reputations of their offices and principals. According to Bertot, Jaeger, and Hansen (2012, p. 30),

Social media refers to a set of online tools that are designed for and centered on social interaction. In practice, social media serves as a catchall phrase for a conglomeration of web-based technologies and services such as blogs, microblogs (i.e., Twitter), social sharing services (e.g. YouTube, Flickr … text messaging, discussion forums, collaborative editing tools (e.g., wikis), virtual worlds ...