Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Building Public Trust in Social Media

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Managing Public Trust

Abstract

In this chapter, we focus on trust as an important factor in the development of the relationship between public organizations that use Twitter and the users who follow them. Public trust is analyzed in three dimensions—competence, benevolence, and integrity—using the example of communication via Twitter during the participative budgeting process in Poland’s voivodships. We examine how trust is earned on Twitter and how the medium is used as a communication tool by politicians and public institutions. We attempt to identify patterns of building trust and the impact of this relationship on the public trust. The methods of communication used by the City Halls of voivodship capitals in Poland and/or their presidents on Twitter are identified, with a focus on the subject of the participatory budget.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Authors’ own study conducted among the students of University of Economics in Katowice (Paliszkiewicz and Koohang 2016).

  2. 2.

    There are 16 voivodships in Poland. However, two of those have two cities indicated as the seats of the voivodship authorities. All of the 18 cities were taken into account.

  3. 3.

    The Gunning text readability index (FOG) is calculated as follows: 0,4*[(LW/LZ) + 100*(LWT/LW)], where LW is the number of words in the text, LWT is the number of words containing more than four syllables (adjusted to the Polish language; for more information, see Gołuchowski et al. 2017b), and LZ is the number of sentences.

  4. 4.

    Program created by Tadeusz Marquardt, which split the text into sentences, sentences into words, and words into syllables.

  5. 5.

    The remaining City Halls and presidents published individual tweets; therefore, the analysis excluded such data due to the difficulty in determining the communication tendencies.

  6. 6.

    Exemplary realizations: In the hyperlink to Dziennik Zachodni: “Many people are involved in this project and my friends often ask me when it will be opened and how will it all look like. This shows that a local society has established around the issue of the water playground [Wiele osób zaangażowało się w ten projekt, a znajomi często pytają mnie, kiedy nastąpi otwarcie, jak to wszystko będzie wyglądać. To pokazuje, że wokół wodnego placu zabaw zawiązała się nawet lokalna społeczność].” Available at http://www.dziennikzachodni.pl/wiadomosci/katowice/a/wodny-plac-zabaw-w-katowicach-bedzie-gotowy-w-lipcu-wizualizacje,11933286/.

    Marcin Krupa, the President of Katowice, highlighted in a video that the participatory budget is a common initiative: https://twitter.com/BOKatowice/status/847004732292038657.

    The posters feature the slogan: “Maybe you already have an idea and you want to discuss it with the neighbors [A może masz już gotowy pomysł i chcesz go omówić z sąsiadami]?” Available at https://twitter.com/BOKatowice/status/846634263122509824.

  7. 7.

    For example, see a video showing children’s happiness caused by the opening of a cinema (https://twitter.com/Miasto_Lodz/status/836999745658843138); the projects enumerated on the poster associated with exhibitions, city decorating, popular music, etc. (https://twitter.com/Miasto_Lodz/status/841651370130362369); and jokes (UFO and San Escobar).

  8. 8.

    It is also associated with the blurring of the boundaries between the spoken and the written language; for example, see Crystal 2002.

References

  • Bortree, D. S., & Seltzer, T. (2009). Dialogic strategies and outcomes: An analysis of environmental advocacy groups’ Facebook profiles. Public Relations Review, 35, 317–319.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bouckaert, G. (2012). Trust and public administration. Administration, 60(1), 93–94.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burgess, F. (2013). The language of corporate governance: A sociological analysis. Retreived from http://www.lccge.bbk.ac.uk/publications-and-resources/postgraduate-research/docs/130930-Dissertation-Language-of-CorpGov.pdf. Accessed 16 Jan 2017.

  • Carnevale, D. G. (1995). Trustworthy government: Leaderships and management strategies for building trust and high performance. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castells, M. (2008). The new public sphere: Global civil society, communication networks, and global governance. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616(1), 78–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coleman, S., & Blumler, J. G. (2009). The internet and democratic citizenship: Theory, practice and policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Criado, J. I., Sandoval-Almazan, R., & Gil-Garcia, J. R. (2013). Government innovation through social media. Government Information Quarterly, 30(4), 319–326.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crystal, D. (2002). Language and the internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Czarnecki, K. (2014). Udział mieszkańców w ustalaniu wydatków budżetu gminy w ramach tzw. budżetu partycypacyjnego (na przykładzie Torunia w latach 2013–2014) [Shares of the inhabitants in determining the community expenditure under the participatory budget (on the example of Toruń, 2013–2014)]. Prawo Budżetowe Państwa i Samorządu, 2(1): 125–145.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahlgren, P. (2005). The internet, public spheres, and political communication: Dispersion and deliberation. Political Communication, 22(2), 147–162.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Doligalski, T. (2009). Budowa wartości klienta z wykorzystaniem Internetu [Building the customer value by using Internet]. In B. Dobiegała-Korona, & T. Doligalski (Ed.), Zarządzanie wartością klienta [Managing customer value]. Warszawa: Poltext.

    Google Scholar 

  • Effing, R., Van Hillegersberg, J., & Huibers, T. (2011). Social media and political participation: Are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube democratizing our political systems? In E. Tambouris, A. Macintosh, & H. De Bruijn (Eds.), Electronic participation. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fard, H. D., Asghar, A., & Rostamy, A. (2007). Promoting public trust in public organizations: Explaining the role of public accountability. Public Organization Review, 7(4), 331–344.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ferro, E., Loukis, E. N., Charalabidis, Y., & Osella, M. (2013). Policy making 2.0: From theory to practice. Government Information Quarterly, 30(4), 359–368.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fukuyama, F. (1995). Trust: The social virtue and the creation of prosperity. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibson, R. K., Lusoli, W., & Ward, S. (2005). Online participation in the UK: Testing a ‘contextualised’ model of internet effects. The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 7(1), 561–583.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilman, H. (2016). Engaging citizens: Participatory budgeting and the inclusive governance movement within the United States. Ash Center occasional papers series, Harvard. http://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/participatory-budgeting-paper.pdf?m=1455295224

  • Gimmler, A. (2001). Deliberative democracy, the public sphere and the internet. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 27(4), 21–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gołuchowski J., Konieczna D., & Losa-Jonczyk A., (2015). Zarys koncepcji dyskursywnego badania blogosfery [Outline of discursive concept of blogosphere research]. In Język a media. Zjawiska komunikacyjne we współczesnych mediach [Language and media. Communication phenomena in the modern media] (pp. 13–31). Kraków: Collegium Columbinum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gołuchowski, J., Filipczyk, B., Paliszkiewicz, J. (2017a, October 26). Social media and trust. In J. Liebowitz, J. Paliszkiewcz, & J. Gołuchowski (Eds.), Intuition, trust, and analytics (Data analytics applications), Auerbach Publications 1st Edition.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gołuchowski, J., Konieczna, D., & Losa-Jonczyk, A. (2017b, October 26). Building trust in CSR reports. In J. Liebowitz, J. Paiszkiewcz, & J. Gołuchowski (Eds.), Intuition, trust, and analytics (Data analytics applications), Auerbach Publications 1st Edition.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hadzialic, S. (2016). Transformation of the new communication media within the frame of interpersonal interaction. International Journal on Global Business Management & Research, 5(2), 116–134.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harisalo, R., & Stenvall, J. (2004). Citizens’ trust in ministers. In M. Huotari & M. Iivonen (Eds.), Trust in knowledge management and systems in organizations (pp. 147–117). Hershey: Idea Group Publishing.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Hatun, B. T. (2016). Government public relations in turkey: Social media usage of turkish ministries in relationship building. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 6(1), 48–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hong, H. (2013). Government websites and social media’s influence on government-public relationships. Public Relations Review, 39(4), 346–356.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hynan, A., Murray, J., & Goldbart, J. (2014). ‘Happy and excited’: Perceptions of using digital technology and social media by young people who use augmentative and alternative communication. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 30(2), 175–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim, S. E. (2005). The role of trust in the modern administrative state. Administration and Society, 37(5), 611–635.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kożuch, B., & Dobrowolski, Z. (2014). Creating public trust. An organisational perspective. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kruikemeier, S., Van Noort, G., Vliegenthart, R., & De Vreese, C. H. (2013). Getting closer: The effects of personalized and interactive online political communication. European Journal of Communication, 28(1), 53–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, G., & Kwak, Y. H. (2012). An open government maturity model for social media – Based public engagement. Government Information Quarterly, 29, 492–503.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, E. J., & Oh, S. Y. (2012). To personalize or depersonalize? When and how politicians’ personalized tweets affect the public’s reactions. Journal of Communication, 62(6), 932–949.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levinson, P. (2010). New new media. Cracow: Penarson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Llewellyn, S., Brooks, S., & Mahon, A. (2013). Trust and confidence in government and public services. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Łukomska-Szarek, J. (2014). Budżetowanie partycypacyjne jako instrument współzarządzania sferą publiczną [Participatory budgeting as an instrument for co-management of the public sphere]. Nierówności Społeczne a Wzrost Gospodarczy, 40: 137–144.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madestam, J., & Falkman, L. L. (2017). Rhetorical construction of political leadership in social media. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 30(3), 299–311.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mainka, A., Hartmann, S., Stock, W. G. & Peters, I. (2014). Government and social media: A case study of 31 informational world cities. System Sciences (HICSS), 47th Hawaii International Conference on, Hawaii, 6–9 January, pp. 1715–1724.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, A. H., & Listhaug, O. (1990). Political parties and confidence in government: A comparison of Norway, Sweden and the United States. British Journal of Political Science, 20(3), 375–386.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Paliszkiewicz, J. (2013). Zaufanie w zarządzaniu [Trust in management]. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paliszkiewicz, J., & Koohang, A. (2016). Social media and trust: A multinational study of university students. California: Informing Science Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Papacharissi, Z. (2002). The virtual sphere: The internet as public sphere. New Media and Society, 4(1), 9–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Park, H., & Reber, B. H. (2008). Relationship building and the use of web sites: How fortune 500 corporations use their web sites to build relationships. Public Relations Review, 34, 409–411.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parmelee, J. H., & Bichard, S. L. (2012). Politics and the Twitter revolution: How tweets influence the relationship between political leaders and the public. Lanham: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Poster, M. (1997). Cyberdemocracy: The internet and the public sphere. In D. Porter (Ed.), Internet culture. New York/London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, R. (1995). Tuning in, tuning out: The strange disappearance of social capital in America. Political Science and Politics, 28(4), 664–683.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rybalko, S., & Seltzer, T. (2010). Dialogic communication in 140 character or less: How fortune 500 companies engage stakeholders using Twitter. Public Relations Review, 36, 336–341.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sintomer, Y., Herzberg, C., & Röcke, A. (2008). Participatory budgeting in Europe: Potentials and challenges. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(1), 164–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Susha, I., & Grönlund, Å. (2014). Context clues for the stall of the citizens’ initiative: Lessons for opening up e-participation development practice. Government Information Quarterly, 31(3), 454–465.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sztompka, P. (1996). Trust and emerging democracy. International Sociology, 11(1), 37–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tench, R., & Jones, B. (2015). Social media: The wild west of CSR communications. Social Responsibility Journal, 11(2), 290–305.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tybuchowska-Hartlińska, K. (2016). Budżet partycypacyjny–nowe narzędzie w rękach obywateli [Participatory budget-a new tool in the hands of citizens]. Political Preferences 12.

    Google Scholar 

  • Utz, S. (2009). The (potential) benefits of campaigning via social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(2), 221–243.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yi, M., Oh, S. G., & Kim, S. (2013). Comparison of social media use for the US and the Korean governments. Government Information Quarterly, 30(3), 310–317.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Economics in Katowice, Katowice, Poland

    Dorota Marquardt, Barbara Filipczyk & Jerzy Gołuchowski

  2. Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warszawa, Poland

    Joanna Paliszkiewicz

Authors
  1. Dorota Marquardt
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Barbara Filipczyk
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Jerzy Gołuchowski
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Joanna Paliszkiewicz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

    Barbara Kożuch

  2. Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Sławomir J. Magala

  3. Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warsaw, Poland

    Joanna Paliszkiewicz

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Marquardt, D., Filipczyk, B., Gołuchowski, J., Paliszkiewicz, J. (2018). Building Public Trust in Social Media. In: Kożuch, B., Magala, S., Paliszkiewicz, J. (eds) Managing Public Trust. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70485-2_9

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation