What is Civic Participation

This chapter describes how little is known about how Greek local authorities capitalize on the potential of social media as a communication channel. The authors present the results of following up on a 2014 study assessing major Greek cities' presence on social media at the time. The authors check whether and how Greek cities may have improved their levels of acting and reacting via social media so as to identify eventual positive changes and/or patterns and discuss potential ways to implement comprehensive strategies for social media as civic interaction tools for local governments. A set of 52 major cities all over Greece (administrative capitals of the corresponding prefectures), has been chosen as the research population. Findings show that local authorities are advancing in the exploration of social media for communication with citizens, but have not yet reached a level at which they would use them as catalysts for citizen interaction in order to enhance civic engagement.