Page 88 - Proceeding 2015

FAMP URS Nicolae
CCASP SOCIAL NETWORK USE IN ROMANIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: BIG CITIES, SMALL STEPS

This applies to Romania, too. The number of Romanians using the internet grew to over 11 million,

meaning 56.3% of the population. There are over 8 million Romanian users on Facebook (Miniwatts
Marketing Group, 2015).

These numbers are part of a story. It is a story of the gulf that is widening between the ways in which

governments are used to communicate with the citizens and the way the increasingly connected citizens
expect to get information from these institutions.

This paradigm is changing with great speed, especially after the advent of the so-called web 2.0. In the
first decade and a half of internet life, the webpages created were used for little more than static display

of information. The public institutions were relatively quick to colonize this new medium of information,
partly because they wanted to be seen as modern and up-to-date, partly because the paradigm was little

different than what they were used to. One-to-many communication was already part of the public
institutions day-to-day operation.

Beginning around 2005, the internet began to rapidly change its offering. The way in which users were

using the internet went through a paradigm shift. New sites, which were not based on simply displaying
information, but leveraged collaboration and the creation of various types of social networks grew PROCEEDINGS OF THE 11 TH ADMINISTRATION AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ”Strategic Management for Local Communities” 30 th – 31 st October 2015 Bucharest
exponentially. These sites were very diverse in subject and purpose, but they relied on one common

commodity: the users were the main providers of content (blogs, wikis, Flickr), goods (eBay), friends
(Facebook), relevance (Google PageRank), feedback and reputation (eBay, TripAdvisor), storing capacity

and file transfer (P2P) or connectivity and computing power (Wi-Fi sharing, fold-at-home) (Osimo, 2008).
All these were reunited under the somewhat vaguely defined term of web 2.0. They changed the way we
interact with the internet. If we take a look at the global top 30 most visited sites, they are either search
engines or web 2.0 sites (social networks, wikis, cloud service providers, blogging platforms, or online

shops).

The information mix that users put together to stay informed has changed rapidly over the last few years.
More and more people get a lot or a majority of information online. Moreover, social networks, and

especially Facebook and Twitter are becoming an important news source for their users (Associated
Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 2015) (in Romania Twitter is not that popular, so the go-

to site remains Facebook).

3. PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REACTION

With the user preferences changing, those that can adjust better to their habits stand to gain. The fight is
for the user’s attention, and as such, those that want to reach the public must adapt. Public administration

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