Perceptions of the UAE's government communicators regarding social media roles

Elsayed Darwish, Zayed University

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

International Journal of Customer Relationship Marketing and Management

Publication Date

10-1-2020

Abstract

© 2020, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Governmental and nonprofit agencies have been increasingly reconsidering the roles of social media communicators for strategic communication to ensure they accurately perceive their roles. A questionnaire and interviews were conducted with various social media communicators in the UAE to identify the practitioners' perceptions of using social media in government communication and the influencing factors on their roles. A set of roles was created based on the literature and theory to explore the social media communicators' roles. The statistical methods include descriptive statistics, factor analysis, correlations, and T-test. This study demonstrates that four factors describe the various roles of SMCs in the UAE as follows: (1) government advocates, (2) information and image disseminators, (3) research and services providers, and (4) online community builders. To some extent, these roles overlap with previous roles identified.

ISSN

1947-9247

Publisher

IGI Global

Volume

11

Issue

4

First Page

20

Last Page

35

Disciplines

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Keywords

Government Communication, Role Theory, Social Media Communicator, Social Media Roles

Scopus ID

85092379649

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

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