Social media legitimacy

Abstract

Public engagement via social media is not treated as legitimate citizen participation. Too often, participation via social media fails to lead to informed decision-making, better public policies, or stronger service delivery. In this thesis, I detail barriers to social media legitimacy in participation, including current laws and organization behaviors. Using Arnstein's ladder of participation as a theoretical foundation, I propose a new evaluative framework for public participation [nil] a Social Media Participation Range. The framework offers a new evaluative tool for researchers and practitioners to analyze citizen participation via social media.