Technique for assessing the digital divide based on the engagement index on VKontakte social media platform
Автор: Prokopyev E.A., Kurilo A.E., Gubina O.V., Shlapeko E.A.
Журнал: Economic and Social Changes: Facts, Trends, Forecast @volnc-esc-en
Рубрика: Theoretical and methodological issues
Статья в выпуске: 5 т.17, 2024 года.
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In modern society, social media have become one of the main sources of information. Many local governments began working with the population on social media platforms after this requirement was legally established in December 2022. Without involving the population in the official information agenda, it is impossible to engage them in a constructive dialogue to identify and solve local problems. Due to the difference in experience, Internet communication skills, and time, municipalities cope with this task with varying degrees of success, which indicates a digital divide. The aim of the research is to develop methods for measuring the digital divide in the work of local government on social media using VKontakte social media platform as an example. To do this, the official pages of municipalities in VKontakte were identified, engagement indices were calculated, the influence of socio-economic and other factors on their values was accessed using regression models, and municipal structures were grouped according to the engagement index using cluster analysis. The study covers 615 settlements, 198 municipalities and okrugs of the Northwestern Federal District in the period from 2017 to 2022. The findings indicate that the use of the engagement index to measure the digital divide is practical only within reference groups. It is proved that the value of the engagement index is negatively affected by the number of population, community longevity, proximity to the regional center, and average wage. It is determined that the largest digital divide is typical for a group of settlements with a population of less than 4.1 thousand people. The proposed methods for assessing the digital divide can be used by communications policy administration to evaluate the performance of local governments on social media, build a scaled system of targets, search for best practices and prevent artificial overestimating of engagement levels.
Social media, vkontakte, engagement index, digital divide, municipalities, settlements
Короткий адрес: https://sciup.org/147245875
IDR: 147245875 | DOI: 10.15838/esc.2024.5.95.8
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