Official pages of Russian city administrations on social networks: analysis of audience activity and engagement (2022-2023)

The development of digital technologies creates the basis for interaction between government authorities and citizens. The involvement of citizens in state and municipal management is considered as the most important state task. Communication methods and formats are expanding to ensure accessibility, efficiency and ease of interaction. Social networks are a popular tool for informing, advising and educating the population. Since December 1, 2022, public authorities are required to use social networks to interact with citizens, expanding opportunities for citizens to participate in the development of proposals, discussion and management decision-making. The article compares the activity on the official pages of the administrations of large Russian cities before and after the adoption of the law on the mandatory creation of official pages of public authorities in social networks (state-owned websites). The paper considered the official pages (state-owned publications) of the executive and administrative bodies of municipalities – administrations of 30 large cities that are the administrative centers of regions (subjects) of the Russian Federation. Data was collected on VKontakte pages, data collection and analysis was carried out manually and automatically using a specialized service for 2022-2023. The article compared and interpreted information about subscribers, publications on official pages, characterized the indicators of engagement and activity in the social network in absolute and relative terms. It was established that all the reviewed state-owned websites were created before 2022, but after the decision was made to create official pages, they became more active. The results show that the number of subscribers, publications, reactions (likes, comments, reposts) has increased, but overall engagement has decreased. The proposed study focuses on comparing the activity of official pages for 2022-2023, which distinguishes it from other studies that focus on monthly data analysis, the work is limited to the use of quantitative data. The conducted research contributes to the work on evaluating the effectiveness of state-owned websites, its results can be used by specialists responsible for maintaining social networks in public authorities to search for best practices in this area, improve feedback from authorities and society using social networks and assess the involvement of citizens in communication.

social network, public participation, public administration, engagement, official page, public page, like, repost, comment, feedback