Blogging is a great way for officials to communicate with the public but too many of their sites are boring

The rise of social media and Web 2.0 technologies has transformed ordinary people's lives and their interactions with governments. Micro blogs, WeChat and other social media applications are being increasingly adopted and used by government organizations and officials in China to facilitate communication with the public. According to a recent report by the Office of Public Sentiment Monitoring, People's Daily Online, the numbers of micro blog accounts opened by government agencies and officials have reached record highs.

By the end of last year, about 160,000 government accounts had been verified on the Tencent micro blog platform. The Sina Weibo platform has about 100,000 accounts. If we consider the accounts on other platforms, such as Netease and People's Daily Online, the number of government micro blogs will add up to 300,000, with an average annual growth rate of more than 100 percent in the past five years.

More than 3,000 government agencies have been using WeChat, a popular mobile instant messenger application developed by Tencent, to interact with netizens on public administration and public policy issues. And the fact that China has the largest number of government micro blog accounts in the world can help it educate and serve the world's largest group of people with Internet access.

It is important to remember that citizens are not just passive recipients of public services, they are also contributors to the conception, design and implementation of policies. Social media have loosened authorities' control over media channels, and everyone can express their opinion and concern online. The ubiquitous use of social media gives people the opportunity to engage in government procedures and help improve governance.

The use of micro blogs and WeChat by the government is an aspect of "Government 2.0", or the use of social media applications to make government more transparent and increase public participation and collaboration in governance. Government agencies harness cutting-edge information technologies to respond more deftly to people's needs and harmonize their mutual relationship in order to garner or consolidate public support. Government officials and civil servants use these applications to interpret their policy concerns and customize public services, which help them gain public support for their policies and programs.

Although social media has the potential to transform the citizen-government relationship, it is not easy for bureaucratic-minded government agencies and officials to use them. The use of micro blogs by government agencies has thrown up some problems, and the merit of Government 2.0 depends largely on how the government addresses them.

The current stage of social media use in government can at best be called "Government 1.5", because the dominant pattern of communication is still unidirectional inculcation rather than bi-directional dialogue. One of the salient features of social media lies in mutual communication, sharing and collaboration, but the engagement of citizens is still weak.

Most micro blog accounts are inactive, acting as silent audiences for influential opinion leaders. In other words, unless citizens are energized to engage in and contribute to public dialogue, there will not be any difference between government micro blogs and web portals.

Micro-blogging enables government to be more responsible and accountable, but its appropriate use is still far away. The distribution of the benefits of government micro-blogging is also questionable, because it excludes a majority of citizens without access to the Internet or essential computer skills. What makes the problem worse is that such people are also most in need of public services.

Micro blogs are mainly opened by specific government agencies, which is at odds with the trend of e-government integration and whole-of-government approach. Many cities have established one-stop service centers, but citizens have to visit each agency's micro blog to inquire about specific policy issues. The boundary between formal and informal use of government micro blogs is still vague, and it is crucial to regulate their use.

In the initial stage, the use of social media primarily depends on the enthusiasm and industriousness of government officials. The lack of formal guidance and regulations impedes its development, but the formalization and institutionalization of micro-blogging can change the behavior of agencies and officials. Officials without sufficient training commonly repost their speeches or documents online, and their officialese further confounds netizens.

The official system of top-down promotion has drastically increased government micro-blogging, but it has also generated lots of ghost accounts. Some agencies, which opened accounts under pressure from higher authorities, seldom update or follow up their micro blogs.

In Beijing, for example, county- and district-level governments were found to have posted health and weather news on their micro blogs to pass the scrutiny of higher authorities. For e-government development, too, many government websites were mandatorily established but then left unattended.

The use of social media has raised citizens' expectations for more effective, efficient and customized services, and the government will find it hard to meet their demands. More government agencies and officials are likely to adopt micro-blogging and other social media applications because of the strong top-down mandate. But how to better use the new technologies? If micro-blogging is not used to promote transparency, interactivity and collaboration, it will become a replica of government websites.

The author is a research fellow at Nanyang Centre for Public Administration, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily European Weekly 02/21/2014 page13)