Social media adoption in the public sector of Bangladesh: Progress and efficiency

1. Introduction

Social media are gradually engulfing the modern information society. The government has been a matter of great concern for researchers about the rise of social media in the last couple of years (Charalabidis & Loukis, 2012). The advent of social media has opened up new opportunities to transform government and change public perception of how government should function (Jaeger & Munson, 2010; Magro, 2012). Many agencies worldwide have been employing social media platforms to facilitate government-citizen interaction, improve government services, and involve people in government efforts. Citizens actively leverage social media to interact with friends, colleagues, employers, social groups, and the government. Government agencies can have completely new and unprecedented ways to inform and be informed by citizens due to the ability to promote relational and collaborative interaction (Kavanaugh et al., 2012). These technologies have many uses and approaches, but they all focus on allowing users to collaborate, connect, edit, and exchange information in a social setting. In contrast to traditional media, social media emphasizes user-generated content or content created by general citizens rather than experts. Traditional media like network television, radio, and books are one-to-many broadcast sites, whereas social media is a many-to-many dialogue platform. This unique feature of social media enables users from different geographical locations to create opportunities for insightful information, address complex challenges by leveraging unique and scarce expertise, and gain diverse perspectives through discussion (Bertot et al., 2012).

In recent years, social media adoption in the public sector has provided ample opportunities for developed countries to improve public service delivery and citizen engagement. Government agencies in the United States have effectively used social media to engage with citizens and provide them with up-to-date information on policies, campaigns, and crisis communication (Mergel & Bretschneider, 2013). Many countries in Europe have also adopted social media in their public sectors. In United Kingdom, France, and Germany, government institutions utilize social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to communicate with citizens and provide them with information on various policies and initiatives (Ceron et al., 2014; Criado et al., 2013; Sivarajah et al., 2014). Social media achieves these goals through real-time updates, citizen engagement, and feedback mechanisms. This shows that social media has become a crucial tool for the public sector worldwide, allowing governments to communicate more effectively with their citizens and promote transparency and accountability.

In Bangladesh, supported by UNDP and USAID, the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) infrastructure has been underpinned through the initiative of the A2i (Access to Information) program in 2007. Under the provision of the A2i program, the government has been trying to achieve the goal of constructing a digital Bangladesh by delivering services at the citizen’s doorsteps (Rahman, 2016). The implementation of e-government services in various strata of the Bangladeshi government has been catalysed by the A2i program, which aims to yield the potentials provided by a digital society. These services have been widely adopted by government agencies to provide citizen services, with their effectiveness having been demonstrated. In recent years, the use of social media platforms by government agencies has become increasingly popular, with most e-government websites including a separate section for social media under the innovation corner. Despite the significant promise that social media holds for enhancing government services and transforming the sector, there is a lack of comprehensive studies that capture the overall progress and initiatives in Bangladesh. This is particularly challenging for a developing country like Bangladesh, which requires strong leadership, policy and legal frameworks, hazard control, account management, and technical expertise to implement innovative technologies in governance. With this in mind, the purpose of this study is to contribute to the underexplored field by investigating the adoption trends and efficiency of social media in the public sector of Bangladesh.

2. Social media in Bangladesh

In many aspects social media technologies have emerged as a powerful tool in promoting government transparency, citizen engagement, and improving public services. However, public managers are confronted with a considerable degree of uncertainty as social media platforms are hosted and developed by third-party entities, leaving the government with minimal or no control over changes in technological features and especially over the emergence of citizen behaviour, which can rapidly evolve (Al-masaeed, 2019; Mergel, 2013). Moreover, public managers face significant uncertainty and must address several concerns when preparing to deal with social media, such as moderating discussions, setting rules for public participation, and keeping records of public comments (Al-masaeed, 2019). Despite these challenges, social media remains a promising avenue for governments to improve citizen engagement and promote transparency in the public sector. This underscores the need for more study into the possibility of social media to facilitate more citizen engagement and participation in the public sector.

Bangladesh is a South Asian developing country with a high of social media penetration. As of January 2021, there were 45 million social media site consumers in Bangladesh (Kemp, 2021). Although Bangladeshis use various social media sites, Facebook has been designated as the most popular, with over 41 million users (Kemp, 2021). In Bangladesh, citizens mostly use Facebook for regular communication services to disseminate information and be informed. Citizens are sharing their ideas on Facebook, which allows them to express themselves and receive feedback from their followers or friends through reactions, comments, and sharing. In that way, relations between people getting deeper than before. As a result, society is becoming smaller, and people are becoming more interconnected via social media. However, the pervasive nature of social media often turns out to be a devastative weapon for spreading rumours and protests in Bangladesh. While social media helps marginalized people get their voices heard, it has also caused significant social and communal tensions in the country in recent years. Several people have been killed in Bangladesh due to violent clashes caused by rumours and misleading information on social media (Rafe, 2019).

According to Al-Zaman et al. (2020), social media has emerged as a major platform in Bangladesh for disseminating rumours and misinformation on the internet. They found that social media rumours can be classified into seven common themes, namely: political, medical and education, violence and human rights, religious, political, cultural activities, and others. Moreover, traditional media and online media are the two primary sources of rumours on social media, and they can have three possible outcomes: positive, negative, or unknown. The majority of social media rumours are negative, originate from online media, and social media itself is the primary online source for such rumours. Health-related rumours are mostly negative and tend to surge during times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. While political rumours still dominate social media, their proportion is decreasing, and religion-related rumours are increasing.

In a study based on 138 respondents from universities and colleges, Rahman and Jahan (2020) discovered that while most respondents believed social media to be a potent tool for spreading rumours, the majority of them were reluctant to take action against the rumour, which easily caused them to succumb to social anarchy and stay in appalling conditions. Additionally, the study showed that 58.7% of all respondents were unaware of the ICT Act. These findings are consistent with a study conducted by Islam et al. (2021) which found that the majority of respondents in their study believed that social media played a significant role in spreading rumours, but only a small percentage of them reported taking any action to combat the spread of false information on social media.

Nonetheless, Bangladesh is one of the few Asian countries establishing social media networks in the public domain. Living in an information age, the Bangladesh government is encountering a tremendous challenge to keep a balance in adopting innovative technology with another developing world. The use of social media in government is on the rise. Government enacting official guidelines (i.e., Digital Security Act 2018) towards civil servants and citizens for social media consumption. Many agencies found a presence on social media accounts and engaged with citizens (Rahman, 2018). The widespread application of ICT with expanding use of social media progressively enfolding the term digital divide and filling the void between the government and Bangladesh’s marginalized people (Islam, 2022). Successful adoption of social media may back the government in reaching goals at a lower cost. However, the implications of social media adoption and government use continue to be underexplored. While these applications undoubtedly provide avenues for direct citizen engagement, their use in Bangladesh remains largely unknown. To date, no studies have been conducted to explore the trend of social media adoption in the public sector or its potential as a critical communication tool. Therefore, the present study aims to shed light on this unexplored field and contribute to the emerging literature on this topic.

3. Methodology

This study aims to examine the adoption of social media in public organizations and analyse their usage pattern in Bangladesh. To accomplish the purpose of this study, we examined the websites of several Bangladesh government agencies listed on the Bangladesh National Portal (www.bangladesh.gov.bd). Bangladesh National Portal is a general gateway of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh administered by the Prime Minister’s Office of Bangladesh as part of the Access to Information programme (A2i). It is a single access point to all information and services for citizens and other interested parties, linked to the websites of all other government agencies and relevant businesses. Between September 28 and October 30, 2022, an exhaustive study was conducted on a total of 495 government websites linked to Bangladesh’s national portal. These websites belonged to 358 directorates and others, 65 ministries and divisions (administrative unit), 64 districts and 8 divisions (administrative region). During this period, these websites were investigated multiple times to guarantee the authenticity of the data collected; however, 32 of them were unable to interact, leading to a total of 463 websites being used for the study

The first phase was to explore government websites to identify integrated social networking sites, communicate with each social media network to gather data, and assess government agencies’ social media presence. Most agencies adopted social networking sites in a separate section titled “social media” on their websites. To capture the overall social media presence and identify major social media sites, we visited each mentioned social media site in its entirety. During this process, we looked for any broken, invalid, or non-clickable site integrations.

In the second phase, a comprehensive analysis was carried out to investigate the usage patterns of social media networks. Bangladesh has a high amount of internet penetration and large audience of social media platforms. According to Kemp (2021), Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are considered to be the most popular social networking sites. The data extraction process involved collecting and analysing information based on common parameters available across these platforms .(Abdelsalam et al., 2013; Bertot et al., 2012; Bonsón et al., 2012). The parameters included the number of followers, account type, account transparency, level of activity, level of interaction, citizen engagement, mode of communication, year of establishment, and types of content posted. The main objectives of this stage were to identify usage patterns, government-user interaction, engagement, and participation in social media networks.

4. Results

The findings of the study indicate that the majority of government agencies in Bangladesh have recognized the importance of social media in connecting with citizens and disseminating information. Facebook the most populated social media site adopted in the public sector of Bangladesh. Most of the agencies present some extinct any of this platform and provide a website with a link to their social media profile. The popularity of Facebook among government agencies in Bangladesh is not surprising, given its wide reach and popularity among the general public. The use of YouTube and Twitter also indicates that government agencies are exploring different platforms to engage with citizens. However, the usage level of YouTube and Twitter was poor which suggests that there is room for improvement in terms of diversifying social media usage. By utilizing a variety of social media platforms, government agencies can build a more robust and resilient communication strategy that can adapt to different situations and connect with a diverse range of citizens. This, in turn, can help to increase transparency, trust, and accountability, which are essential for effective governance in the public sector (Bonsón et al., 2012; Song & Lee, 2016).

This study focused on the usage patterns of government agencies on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the extent to which these platforms were being used for public engagement. The finding shows that government agencies mainly used these platforms for disseminating information about events, activities, initiatives, and other news as a representation (one way communication) form. In contrast, interaction with users through replying to comments on posts was minimal. Even in cases where interactions did occur, they were limited to one or two users’ comments, with most agencies preferring to refer inquiries to the inbox or providing brief answers to questions and thanking users for their comments. Mergel (2013) observes that representation tactics allow public officials to push policy statements or major press releases in a one-way manner, which is characteristic of very conservative organizations. In contrast, engagement and networking communication strategy through social media platforms can create opportunities for citizens to engage with government agencies, provide feedback on policies and services, and participate in decision-making processes.

The study also found that the interaction of government-citizen was minimal, with only limited subscribers and viewers. This is consistent with the study that has shown that government agencies in developing countries are less likely to engage with citizen on social media platforms than their counterparts in developed countries (Abdelsalam et al., 2013; Al-masaeed, 2019; Shah & Lim, 2011). There are several reasons for this, including complex bureaucratic structure, low levels of participation, resistance to change, and lack of digitalisation. The study’s findings suggest that most government agencies discourage using these platforms for disseminating information rather than interacting with the citizen. However, it is important to note that social media can be a powerful tool for public engagement if used effectively. Research has shown that social media can facilitate citizen participation, increase transparency and accountability, and improve the quality of public services (Bertot et al., 2012; Eom et al., 2018). To realize these benefits, government agencies need to adopt a more strategic and interactive approach to social media use. This involve developing clear goals and objectives for social media use, identifying target audiences, and actively engaging with users through dialogue and feedback mechanisms.

Moreover, the study indicates that several technical shortcomings are linked to the maintenance of social media and websites. Therefore, there is a pressing need to enhance the technical infrastructure of government websites and integrate social media more effectively. These are analogous to those of Al-masaeed (2019), who discovered that the adoption of social media sites in public organizations contains a number of issues with regard to social media adoption in the public sector, such as broken, incorrect, or invalid linkage integration. Consequently, such technical deficiency represents some unprofessional touch towards website maintenance and poor integration of social media linkage with websites that require regular interactions, updating current information, and social media expertise to channel communication. According to Karakiza (2015), it is essential for government to provide the highest quality in the social media sites with a lively public participation if they want to fully harness the potential of social media sites in the public sector domain. Actually, social media is where digital citizens socialize, so if governments want to engage with them, they must go there. To effectively leverage their possibilities, government organizations should therefore create their web-based programs in a service quality context.

6. Conclusion and recommendations

This paper provides a gauging insight into the social media adoption and usage pattern in the public sector of Bangladesh. The results uncover that Facebook is the most popular social media network. Most agencies use social media platforms as a one-way communication system. Produced content through social media, in most cases, is disseminated through top-down ideology without having any further discussion with citizens. Social media sites, such as Twitter and YouTube, were generally outdated. Many accounts found do not initiate any post/content in a year or two. The usage pattern was limited. Constant communication between government-citizen is absent, and two-way interaction hardly takes place. These technologies are mainly used to disseminate information through news and announcements rather than increase citizen participation, engagement, and trust in governance. In short, there is no deny that these tools significantly facilitate two-way interaction, citizen engagement, participation, transparency, and trust in government. Social media adoption in Bangladesh is still in the informational stage, which is identical to that of developing countries. To harness the full potential of social media platforms following recommendations can be made about social media usage in the public sector of Bangladesh.

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Establish proper guidelines and strategies regarding social media usage in the public sector.

Finally, the findings of this study are anticipated to guide the government in implementing effective social media practices in the public sector, serving as an instrument for future decision-making in social media use and contributing to the development of better strategies in the government.