Challenges to government use of social media

The use of different kinds of social media by government has been steadily increasing over the last decade. National, regional and local governments often employ social media to communicate and interact with citizens, organizations and/or other government agencies. However, as many authors highlight, the use of social media by government has many challenges, barriers and issues which undermine governments' actual use of social media. We argue, however, that prior research has to some extent overlooked the nature of challenges, in so far as it does not fully address differences between them and other elements, such as risks. This has resulted in a debate on challenges that includes both general barriers and risks of social media use by governments which, as a consequence, does not allow for consideration of the different actions that are needed to counter challenges and risks.