Tweeting Government: A Case of Australian Government Use of Twitter

Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has gained considerable popularity among professionals, celebrities and lately by organisations and governments. The application of Twitter in enterprises has been discussed in both practice and academia. However there are few publications on government use of Twitter, in particular for Australian government. This research-in-progress paper investigates Australian government use of Twitter and seeks to understand government Twitter use phenomenon. Six government agency tweets were analysed to understand the communicative practices and types of use by the agencies. The analysis shows that agencies are primarily using Twitter to disperse information, particularly links to news articles about themselves, and to report on their activities. Further citizen interaction is also analysed within these agencies by analysing citizen tweets aimed at these agencies. The paper aims to contribute to better understanding of the government Twitter phenomenon on the public Social Network Site (SNS) that can lead to useful conclusions for government agency adoption and usage of Twitter.