Overview

This edition of the Arab Social Media Report primarily focuses on the role social media is playing in public service design and delivery through citizen engagement in the Arab region. The survey administered for this issue measures public attitudes and perceptions towards the adoption of social media by Arab governments for the purpose of public service delivery. Respondents were asked about their usage of government social media pages, their perceptions of benefits and risks involve in using social media for service delivery, perceptions towards possible improvements in government’s use of social media, and government and civic social media practices.

Overall, our findings show that perceptions about the use of social media were positive – 55% of respondents said they strongly support the use of social media by government for the design and delivery of public services. Respondents had high expectations of the benefits of using social media for citizen engagement for the purpose of improving service delivery. They agreed that social media made government entities and officials more accessible and collaboration more feasible. Additionally, respondents demonstrated a healthy level of awareness about the risks associated with social media use within the context of public services, including cyber security threats, administrative, regulatory and resource limitations. Perceptions of risks and benefits were largely universal and did not vary between demographic groups.

Social Media, Information and Feedback on Government Services

Only 2% of respondents reported visiting official social media pages or using their personal social media accounts as a first resort for finding information on public services in the Arab World. Information on government services were mostly accessed through the use of Internet search engines such as Google or Yahoo, with 30% of respondents reporting this as their primary source of information. This was followed by accessing information directly from official government websites, with 27% of respondents reporting it as their first choice for information on public services (Figure 1). These results are expected given the ease of finding information through search engines; and the fact that a large number of government entities in the Arab region tend not to have social media presence.

Figure 1. Primary access choice when seeking information about government services

“When seeking information about government services, my first option usually is:”

Social media can be an accessible channel for providing feedback. However, when it comes to providing feedback on government services, there seems to be several barriers for citizens to do so in the Arab region. A majority (57%) of respondents indicated that they have never done so, while a large minority (43%) of respondents in this survey indicated that they had at one point provided feedback on government services (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Feedback to the government on service delivery

“Have you ever provided feedback to the government in your country of residence on service delivery?”

When available, ‘customers’ prefer to communicate with government entities using online methods. In our survey, the vast majority of respondents said that they submit their feedback to government online rather than through traditional methods such as customer call centers or hard copy feedback forms. Of those who provided feedback, most did so through online electronic forms (19% of all respondents) while 9% of respondents reported sending their feedback through email. Meanwhile, 11% of our respondents provided feedback through government social media pages, such as Facebook pages, while only 2% of respondents tweeted their feedback directly to a government official of government entity (Figure 2).

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