Beyond Self-Presentation. An Analysis of the Romanian Governmental Communications on Facebook

Abstract

The present study is one of the few studies that examine the social media communication of the Romanian governmental institutions from a systematic perspective accounting for three categories of messages that enhance the goals of open governance, transparency, participation, and collaboration. Our research contributes to developing the research methodology in the field, given the methodological tool we used based on previous literature on social media communication of public institutions with relevant elements added from political communication. The research focuses on the official Facebook pages of the following Romanian governmental institutions: the Romanian Government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Health. Moreover, based on content analysis of N = 2,484 Facebook posts, we examined how different social media content generates differences in citizen engagement. Findings showed that the Romanian governmental institutions we analyzed frequently used Facebook posts. However, we observed significant differences between the institutions regarding message types. Our results align with previous research conducted in other Western countries showing that public institutions mostly used social media for impression management and transparent communication and less for participation and collaboration.