Demand Pressure or Reputational Incentive? The Double-Edged Sword of Social Media Visibility in Local Government Responsiveness

• In Event: State Responsiveness to Citizen Engagement: Effectiveness of Information, Participation, and Social Media

Abstract

Social media has reshaped how local governments engage with citizens, yet whether such visibility translates into more responsive government remains contested. While prior research has examined social media adoption and citizen trust, less is known about how digital visibility simultaneously shapes citizen demand for government action and bureaucratic supply of responsive service. This study asks whether social media reconfigures the demand–supply dynamics of local government responsiveness, amplifying citizen voice on the demand side while incentivizing reputation management on the supply side. Integrating Hirschman's (1970) voice framework with bureaucratic reputation theory (Carpenter, 2010; Maor, 2016) under the broader lens of visibility-as-governance (Flyverbom, 2016; Meijer, 2013), we theorize two parallel mechanisms. First, social media increases citizens' access to government information by reducing information asymmetry. Government visibility lowers the cost of civic participation and broadens the base of citizens who engage with government, thereby increasing the volume of formal complaints and policy proposals submitted to local authorities. We hypothesize that higher YouTube visibility is associated with a greater number of citizen complaints and policy proposals. Second, visibility heightens reputational stakes for local bureaucracies. Because service failures become more publicly observable, reputation-sensitive governments have stronger incentives to process citizen demands faster and more thoroughly. We hypothesize that higher visibility is associated with higher resolution rates, shorter processing times, and lower recidivism rates. These mechanisms may also operate in tension: rising citizen demand can strain administrative capacity even as reputation concerns motivate improved responsiveness, making administrative capacity a likely boundary condition. We test these propositions using a panel of South Korean metropolitan cities and provincial governments. Independent variables capture YouTube visibility through trends in subscriber counts, video view counts, and posting frequency. Demand-side outcomes include the number of citizen complaints and policy proposals submitted. Supply-side outcomes include the complaint resolution rate, average processing time, and recidivism rate. We estimate two-way fixed effects models with lagged visibility measures to address reverse causality and unobserved heterogeneity. This study makes both theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, it integrates Hirschman's voice framework with bureaucratic reputation theory under the lens of visibility-as-governance, offering a more comprehensive explanation of how visibility simultaneously expands citizen demand and shapes governmental responses through reputation incentives. Practically, the findings inform how local governments can design digital engagement strategies that strengthen rather than strain responsiveness, and suggest that expanding social media presence without corresponding investment in administrative capacity may generate voice without commensurate responsiveness.

Authors

• Sungyeop Kim, University at Albany
  Presenting Author

• Namhee Kim, University of Kentucky
  Non-Presenting Co-Author