Democratization of Social Media Usage through Social Media Policies

Abstract

Social media can be characterized as platform that is available for citizens, private organizations, public administration organizations or politicians. Despite of the benefits of social media usage, public administration organizations must focus their attention on the risks of social media usage, mainly the challenges connected with principles of democratic states governed by the rule of law. An important part of this process is the social media institutionalization, which includes the elaboration of social media policy. Social media policies can help to maximize benefits of social media use, and simultaneously mitigate potential risks. The ambition of the study is to examine selected aspects of social media usage in the sphere of public administration, mainly the importance of social media policies as well as the challenges that must be reflected by these policies. By using inductive and deductive approach, the aim of the study is to examine, in the theoretical way, the challenges of social media use that can be perceived as factors of social media policies reformulation. Major challenges of social media usage in the sphere of public administration are highlighted, such as information disorder, political neutrality, administration outsourcing and advertising, legitimacy, as well as rapid and unpredictable development of social media. The benefit of the article is also associated with fostering an interest in major challenges that affects the use of social media in the sphere of public administration.