Why do people comment on government social media - an empirical analysis on China's local governments in Sina Weibo

Abstract

Government microblog is a new way to provide public service and communicate with public. The engagement is an important guarantee to realise the effects of government microblog platform. This research builds an interest-driven behaviour model to explain the micro-level public engagement behaviour on specific posts published on government microblogs. Specifically, we focus on how the individual's characteristic, features of posts and historical personal interest recorded on the web influence him or her selecting specific post to interact with, and it is verified by the data from Sina Weibo. Results show that the interest match has significant positive influence on personal engagement, and the interest match of posts by higher administrative level-government officials is lower than by lower administrative level-officials. Also, posts with rich information will be more likely to receive more engagement. These findings would help government officials to promote more engagement with public.