Abstract:

Developing with the effect of information and communication technologies and reaching millions of users, social media has added a new dimension to the managing-managed relationship. Through social networks, people can follow the managements of their local governments and make criticisms. It actively uses social media in institutions and can carry out public relations through social networks. In recent years, especially metropolitan municipalities have come to the fore with their use of social media. In this context, understanding how social media creates an environment in terms of public relations and revealing the use of social media by metropolitan municipalities constitute the basis of the study. The study aims to measure the effectiveness of municipalities' use of social media through Trabzon Metropolitan Municipality’s Official Corporate Twitter account. The method of the research is qualitative research. The technique of the research is content analysis. As a result of the research, it was concluded that metropolitan municipalities use social media as a one-way communication tool with a more informative aspect, and they prefer less interaction and dialogue-oriented two-way communication. In addition, the limitation of participation-based sharing shows that the democratic character of social media is not sufficiently adopted.

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