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Top1. Introduction
At over 20 years old, electronic government, or e-government (EGOV) is a transformative force and global phenomenon of strategic importance (Norris & Lloyd, 2006; Oyedele & Koong, 2005; Borras, 2004). EGOV is the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the public sector as a means to deliver government services (Marchionini, Samet, & Brandt, 2003) and to improve service quality, integrated service, and market development (Grant & Chau, 2004). The tradition of EGOV research grew from its beginnings as a nascent field (Norris & Lloyd, 2006) to the increased rigor and development of theoretical constructs (Rana, Williams, Dwivedi, & Williams, 2011) and integrated theoretical models (Rana, Dwivedi, & Williams, 2013). Common components of the EGOV artifact in this tradition of research are (1) the technology behind EGOV, (2), the behavior and perspective of involved stakeholders, and (3) the outcomes - successes and shortcomings - of EGOV initiatives (Chiang & Liao, 2009; Morgeson & Mithas, 2009; Teo, Srivastava, & Jiang, 2008; Roy, 2006; Grönlund & Horan, 2004).
The successful interaction of these three components is considered to have far-reaching transformative potential: from one-way non-interactive information services to two-way transactions, being a one-stop portal for all government services, empowering citizens by increased participation and public discourse, and reducing corruption by increasing transparency and citizen trust in government (Teo et al. 2008; Grönlund & Horan, 2004; Macintosh, 2004; Ho, 2002). Despite the transformative potential and available technologies, governments seem unable to move past the most basic EGOV functions (Bonsón, Torres, Royo, Flores, 2012; Norris & Reddick, 2012). As Cumbie and Kar (2014) revealed, local level EGOV websites are frequently non-existent or non-inclusive which limits their transformative potential. Social media (SM) has emerged as a potential technology to advance the development of EGOV and bridge the divide of interaction between citizen and government.
As the ICT environment continually changes, governments are embracing SM as part of their EGOV strategies. SM has become the platform for user-generated content published online, micro-blogging (e.g., status updates and tweets), establishing public and private communication networks, and extends to mobile computing to incorporate location-based services. These allow users to have both a high degree of connectivity and access to selective information and to generate and share multimedia content in near real-time. The qualities of SM seem like a natural fit with EGOV goals of information provision, collaboration, and participation. Because SM is seen as a vehicle to increase effectiveness and legitimacy by communicating with internal and external stakeholders (Mijer & Thaens, 2013), researchers have explored the adoption and use of SM in government (e.g., Hong, 2013; Mijer & Thaens, 2013; Mossberger, Wu, &Crawford, 2013; Oliveira & Welch, 2013; Reddick & Norris, 2013; Bertot, Jaeger, & Hansen, 2012; Bonsón et al., 2012). Past research concluded the same patterns for SM as EGOV in general: SM is present, can and has produced positive outcomes (Mijer & Thaens, 2013), but is largely in an early and experimental stage of development (Bonsón et al., 2012) and expectations fall short of reality (Haahr, 2013).