Abstract:

Public relations are important in local governments in order to inform citizens about their daily activities, to get their views on new projects and to inform them about their fields of activity. In accordance with the requirements of the age, the media where public relations activities are carried out in local governments have also differentiated and the use of social media has become widespread. The aim of the study is to reveal the frequency of using social media in the public relations activities of metropolitan municipalities during the Covid-19 pandemic period. The study is important in terms of evaluating the use of social media by public institutions in order to inform and guide the public. In the study, the shares of metropolitan municipalities on Twitter between the process on March 13th – June 01st 2020 were transformed into data suitable for NCapture extensions Nvivo program, and these data were analyzed and classified under certain categories. In addition, the “WordCloud” views of the three most shared municipalities were created and analyzed. In the result of the analysis, it was seen that all metropolitan municipalities have actively used the social media, "Retweet from the Mayor" and "Corporate Activity" categories have been mentioned more in the posts, as well as all the municipalities has shared post with the coronavirus theme in the related process. WordCloud views also gave coherent results with the severity of the categories. As a result, the assumptions that metropolitan municipalities actively use social media as a communication and public relations tool and that they often include the coronavirus theme are supported.

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