Social Media Communication in Central Governments: the Case of Twitter Activity of Italian Ministries

The study explores twitter use by Italian central governments through a content analysis carried out on 5330 tweets of 9 official accounts of government departments at the state level. The aim is to give a picture of what governmental organizations are doing on twitter by investigating their models of communications and asking whether or not twitter is used in a participatory way. To do this, the study looks at the nature of content published on twitter and the network of relationships built through mentioning. On the basis of these dimensions, a positional map synthesising the models of communication and use of twitter for each account is built. Findings indicate that twitter use in Italian context is somewhat limited and that twitter is rarely used in a participatory way. Contrary to literature claims of interactivity, participation and collaboration on twitter, in the context of Italian central governments twitter seems to function as a promotional and informative channel of communication rather than as a catalyst for generating shared governance. In the Italian context, twitter cannot be considered a new venue for participation and collaboration but continues to be primarily a broadcast technology used to promote political and institutional values and to distribute information in a traditional top-down model.