Building Holistic Evidence for Social Media Impact

Abstract

Social media measurement is important for understanding an organization's reach and engagement with its audiences. In response to Warren Kagarise and Staci M. Zavattaro's question about what works in social media measurement, this article discusses how public administration researchers and practitioners are using social media data that they can easily collect from social media platforms and contrasts these practices with data measurement efforts that can provide deeper insights for evidence-based decision making. This evidence includes interactivity and connectivity among citizens, attributes of network actors, and network structures and positions to understand how content travels through the network and who are the influential actors.