The Measurement of Citizen Engagement with Municipalities through Facebook in Turkey: An Empirical Analysis within the Context of Metropolitan and Provincial Municipalities

Today, governments are under the pressure to make rational public policies based on citizens’ preferences and to provide better public services. Therefore, the administrative reforms implemented both in developed and developing countries in recent years aim at building citizen-centred public administration. Citizen engagement constitutes a significant dimension of building citizen-centred public administration. Citizen engagement requires the inclusion of citizens into the processes of making public policies and providing public services, and improving the relationships between the public institutions and citizens. The social media that reflect the latest developments in the field of internet have the potential to offer new opportunities in improving this relationship. However, there is a need for empirical studies that analyze whether the social media support the citizen engagement. In this context, this article, using a metrics set, aims at measuring the level of citizen engagement with municipalities through Facebook as a social media tool in Turkey and categorizing the municipalities from this particular perspective. The findings of our empirical analysis have revealed that in Turkey, the level of citizen engagement with municipalities through Facebook is low level. The findings obtained from this empirical analysis have some strong similarities with previous studies in the relevant literature.