Exploring the role of social media in e-government: An analysis of emerging literature

Driven by rising citizen expectations and the need for government innovation, social media has become a key component of e-government in a very short period of time. A number of research papers have been published on the role of social media in e-government in last few years. This study performs a literature review of the articles on the use of social media for getting access to e-government websites from the perspective of citizens. The database search through Scopus resulted in 115 articles, which formed the basis of this literature review. The keywords analysis of these articles indicates that 'e-government' and 'social media' were the most explored keywords across these studies. The methodological analysis indicates that the majority of the studies were analytical/conceptual/descriptive/theoretical in nature. The theoretical analysis, however, indicates that there is a lack of such research that has used some well-established theories or models to understand this concept. The review of literature further indicates that research themes such as 'electronic participation', 'engagement', 'transparency', 'communication/ interaction', 'trust' and 'collaboration' were found as some of the most frequently used categories under this area of research.