La gestión de los medios sociales en la Administración local: análisis de los municipios rurales españoles

An increasingly global and technological communicative environment, with new media and support, and a much more dynamic behavior of citizens, has forced local authorities to have an active presence in social media. As a result of the theoretical review, we have detected that its management has been analyzed in some media. But only in the town halls of the provincial capitals and of the cities of more than 50,000 inhabitant not in the case of the smaller municipalities. Due to the importance of the rural environment in Spain, it is a must to investigate this draught. This work aims to know: the main social media that are being used in these municipalities; the person in charge of carrying out their management; and if they are implanted from a communicative strategy or not. The selected methodology has been the self-administered Internet survey for mayors and their communication departments. The results obtained see that the rural municipalities are making a great effort to join the Communication 2.0 and, more specifically, to adapt to the new social media environment. Although more and more municipalities take into account communication and understand it as a conversation with citizens, and not as mere unilateral information, there is still a long way to go.