Examining social media, citizen engagement and risk communication: a smart city perspective

Dalwai, T ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5754-5384, James, M, Al Haddabi, N, Webster, W, Alshukaili, AM and Soosaimanickam, A, 2023. Examining social media, citizen engagement and risk communication: a smart city perspective. In: Abdul Ahad, M, Casalino, G and Bhushan, B, eds., Enabling technologies for effective planning and management in sustainable smart cities. Cham: Springer, pp. 319-333. ISBN 9783031229213

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Abstract

Governments around the world have had a varied response to social media adoption to communicate and engage their citizens. For the official purpose, social media has been used to create awareness of policies, ongoing projects, and new and other important public announcements. The smart city concept is predominantly based on the technology implementation that is expected to create sustainable economic development and improved quality of life. Oman 2040 strategy has aimed to achieve Smart Cities as a national ambition. During the pandemic, social media became an invaluable tool for the direct transmission of important information directed toward saving lives. This chapter aims to investigate the communication strategies and level of citizen engagement during COVID-19, through the Ministry of Health (MoH) Twitter posts in Oman. It also examines the risk communication strategies by MoH. The social media posts are analysed for the pandemic’s initial six-month period in Oman which began on 24th February 2020. A total of 1722 COVID-19-related tweets were analysed. The content analysis of the tweets suggested the MOH preferred to use the push strategy of communication during the COVID-19 period. The tweets were predominantly communicating the risk related to the pandemic. This study is expected to benefit the governments, health agencies, community and researchers as it provides insights on citizen engagement and risk communication strategies.

Item Type:	Chapter in book
Creators:	Dalwai, T., James, M., Al Haddabi, N., Webster, W., Alshukaili, A.M. and Soosaimanickam, A.
Publisher:	Springer
Place of Publication:	Cham
Date:	1 March 2023
ISBN:	9783031229213
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1007/978-3-031-22922-0_13 DOI 1878921 Other
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Laura Ward
Date Added:	05 Apr 2024 08:24
Last Modified:	05 Apr 2024 08:24
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/51196

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