The role of social media in e-Government: systematic literature review and case of Jordan

Abstract

Social media has become a new revolution in communications and most governments around the world use these platforms as two-way communication between them and the citizens. The Jordanian government started using these platforms early, so this paper came to examine the Jordanian's practice on these platforms. The paper use two way of analysis, the first one was a systematic literature review in the largest two databases (Scopus and Web of Science). After the literature has been analysed and the paper found the best practices for governments around the world, three main determinants were identified for any government to start the use of social media (presence, up to date information and interaction). The most popular Jordanian's social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) have been selected to start the analyses and 52 Jordanian governmental institutions (all the 25 ministries and 27 institutions belong to the prime ministry) have been analysed. After the institutions' websites and their pages or accounts on social media platforms scanned and analysed, most of the institutions have fulfilled the first two criteria (presence) and 77% shows that they have appearances on social media and (up to date information) 67% of the institutions regularly updated their information. But for the last criteria (interaction) we have found that the institutions still need to improve their interactions with the citizens since the results showed only 38% of these institutions have interaction on their pages or accounts on social media.