Strategies of Major Cities on Social Media: City Councils as Informational References
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Abstract
This proposal aims to analyze how the city councils of Spain’s largest cities manage their official accounts on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Specifically, it examines the strategies they employ to inform and listen to citizens through these channels, the main formats and tones that are most effective on each platform, and their role as informational references for both adults and adolescents. The objective is to identify best practices for engaging with audiences of different ages, gathering their perspectives on local issues, fostering loyalty among citizens, and establishing themselves as reliable sources of information. To this end, using the FanpageKarma application, the 5,000 posts with the highest interaction rates in 2023 were downloaded from each social network for the 80 municipalities classified as “large cities” under the relevant Spanish legislation, as well as from the autonomous communities. Thus, the methodological technique of content analysis is applied, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in order to examine the messages, their impact on audiences, and the feedback received by the institutions.
The study concludes that, although city councils are making significant efforts to adapt to the digital era, the challenge of becoming informational references on their own channels requires a greater commitment to platforms and messages that are more closely aligned with society. For example, increasing their presence on TikTok represents both a current and future investment, especially when considering younger audiences, since only one third of the studied city councils maintain an official account on this platform.
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