Public participation has come to be viewed as an essential element in establishing municipal policy and planning objectives. Civic administrations continually search for the magic combination of online and in-person engagement strategies that will increase public involvement.
Social media, specifically Facebook, has been viewed as a panacea for widening the demographic and increasing participation in the community development process. Research has provided evidence of the potential for social media to increase public engagement. However, there is a deficiency of quantitative data on whether municipal Facebook pages have actually achieved this.
A survey will be distributed to a specific cohort in a professional municipal communicator association who have established Facebook pages for their communities. Questions will focus on the initiatives/reasons for setting up a Facebook page and whether it a) increased the number of residents participating in civic decision-making and b) widened the demographic of participants. Qualitative date will be gathered through semi-structured interviews with a sample group taken from the survey respondents and with members from associated departments for whom a Facebook presence was created. The results will help to inform municipalities on best practices for online engagement tools.
rouleaugirl 
Comments on: "A quantitative examination of municipal governments’ success in using Facebook to increase public participation in community development decisions" (9)
Looks good to me Joan. It is very detailed regarding your approach for 200 words. The only thought I have is to whether you will mention the theory/framework you will be coming from to build your approach. I don’t think it is necessary for the abstract though.
Thanks Leah. I was wondering that as well; John managed to put it in but not everyone has. It’s already 198 words so I would have to cut something to put it in and I thought it was important to reference that fact that a lot of research has been done on various aspects of this topic.
Hi Leah and Joan, technically if you look at her handout on criteria for the abstract the theory does not show up. That said, I wrote down in my notes to include a brief mention of it. Others, including guru Trish did not use it in hers. It reads nicely Joan.
Thanks Teresa,
I looked at Trish’s after I had posted mine and went back and made some tweaks so it better fulfilled the PICA criteria. I plan to post it tonight. This Blog has been a great tool for collaborating with the class.
No kidding it’s sort of like crowd sourcing your abstract
Hi Joan,
my comments are as follows:
– typo in last paragraph: qualitative “date”
– reads very well
– any insight into what tools you will use to build your questionnaire?
you mentioned that i managed to work in a couple of theories, but i’ve since determined they’re bunk as they don’t fit with quantitative data. i don’t think it’s necessary (at least i hope not).
I agree that it looks great, Joan. And, it isn’t necessary to have your theory in the abstract since it’s so short. Just make sure you put it into your poster.
Hey Joan, if you haven’t submitted already one suggestion I would make is to take “success” out of your title. Talking with Diane, important to not appear to make advance judgements about outcomes. You want to find out if there’s been success, but that shouldn’t be part of your abstract. I like the ideas in here, good detail on the methodology. One thing you probably will need to do – whether to note in abstract or not up to you – is whether or not there is a pre-FB demographic benchmark of any sort available; without that it may be tough to determine improvements. You’re tight for words too but you can thin out some “the” and maybe a bit less detail in the method.
Damn I already submitted it but those are really good points. I was trying to elliminate value judgement words so I should have realized “success” wasn’t a good choice.too late now.