Social media policy in Turkish municipalities: Disparity between awareness and implementation

Abstract

This chapter aims to analyze the present state of social media policy implementation and evaluation in Turkish municipalities in the Marmara region. We employed a questionnaire form for this purpose. We found that only a ratio of 35.5 % have social media policy. A great majority of respondent municipalities lack a written guide in conducting social media use at institutional level. We do not observe a common policy for personnel education addressing social media use for better personal, or institutional interest, neither do we see a diffusive evaluation of social media use. Thus, we argue that there is an increasing rate of awareness in terms of benefitting from social media use but there is a clear deficiency with regard to implementing and evaluating the social media policy.