Making Sense of Governmental Activities Over Social Media: A Data-Driven Approach

Although social media attracted significant interest from governments throughout the globe, the challenge of a successful exploitation of big social data to gain valuable insights in the decision making process is still unmet. This paper aims to provide policy makers with hints and actionable guidelines for a data-driven analysis of the social accounts they manage. To this aim, we firstly propose a three-dimensional modular framework to structure the analysis; then, the logical steps required within this framework for meaningfully process big social data are detailed by suggesting text mining techniques useful for the analysis. The proposed data-driven approach could lead public administrators to a better understanding of their use of social accounts and to measure the community engagement around some topics of interest. Findings can constitute fresh insights from which public policy makers may draw for enhancing the community involvement and for becoming far more reactive to the citizenry's needs.