Understanding Behaviors, Experiences and Perspectives of Government Social Media Users

Social media is being adopted at a rapid pace by governments around world and across different levels of government. In Canada, federal, provincial and municipal governments created social media accounts in 2000s and are now using them to interact with the public. Research to date, however, focuses primarily on social media strategies and practices of government agencies while government social media users' behaviors, experiences and perspectives remain understudied. This paper addresses the existing gap in literature and analyzes how users interact on Twitter and Facebook accounts maintained by a federal government agency - Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). It also explores why users turn to government social media as well as their experiences and perspectives.