Inherent Barriers to the Use

of Social Media for Public

Policy Informatics

Cliff Lampe Robert LaRose

Charles Steinfield Kurt DeMaagd

Michigan State University

Michigan State University Cooperative Extension

MSU Extension

Established in 1912

Offices in all 83 MI counties

Serve residents of Michigan

Policy at local levels

MSU Extension Structure

MSU Needs Assessment[

Needs assessment goals

Collect feedback on

MSUE org goals

Identify new service

needs

Intro MSUE mission to

new audiences

Show social media

savvy

AdvanceMI Timeline

January 2010

Decision to use social media

April 2010

Site creation, soft launch

May 2010

Grand launch

July 2010

Site closed

September 2010

Data analyzed, reported

Framing literature

E-government

Technology adoption

Social media and e-government

“Grudin problems”

Grudin 1994

Disparity between who does the work and who gets the benefit

Critical mass and Prisoner’s dilemma problem

Disruption of social processes

Exception handling

Unobtrusive accessibility

Difficulty of evaluation

Failure of intuition

Managing the adoption process

Method- Case study approach

- Analysis of content

- Interviews with MSUE

directors flickr: jpwbee

Site content

561 unique comments

Constant comparative technique

771 action themes

No real discussion, rather one-off points

Structured interviews

40 structured interviews across diverse set of counties

Awareness, but not investment

Saw as a bad match for their audience

Threatened their current process

Not clear on benefitflicker: kuminiac

Lessons from AdvanceMI

Audience matching

Organizational readiness

Thinking about new audiences

Motivation to participate

Software functionality

Timeframe appropriateness

Task fit

Thank you!

Cliff Lampe

lampecli@msu.edu

Twitter: @clifflampe

Slideshare: clifflampe

Robert LaRose

larose@msu.edu

Charles Steinfield

steinfie@msu.edu

Kurt DeMaagd

kdemaagd@msu.edu