Determinants of the Citizen Engagement Level of Mayors on Twitter: The Case of Turkey

Abstract

Today, politicians like other political actors use social media to interact with their audiences. In the relevant literature, studies on the use of social media by politicians focus more on how politicians use social media for political communication during the election periods and its impact on the election results. Furthermore, these studies mainly focus on national politicians. Few studies focus on the use of social media during a non-election period by the local politicians, and these studies analyse the purpose of using social media. Therefore, in the relevant literature, there is a need for empirical studies to measure the citizen engagement level of local politicians during the non-election period and analyse its determinants beyond the purpose of using social media. In this context, this study aims to analyse the relationship between some factors and the level of citizen engagement of the mayors on Twitter in Turkey. The findings of the analysis show that there is a relationship between the status of municipalities and the engagement level of mayors.