Social Media

to the Internet and access varies enormously according to a country’s modern resources and political openness” (Rose 2005a, b, p. 5).

Providing citizenship-oriented services implies helping the wider population. Saxena (2005) describes e-governance as more than just computerization. Leitner (2003) suggests socio-economic transformation for the involvement of the citizens. E-governance needs to look after the interests of all citizens. It must meet the needs of diverse groups, including the old, disable and people with limited resources such as technology access, knowledge of a English language, etc., and those in rural and remote areas (Teicher et al. 2002).

The citizen-oriented e-governance can lead to what Robert Denhardt and Janet Denhardt (2007) call for “a New Public Service” (NPS) as a governing heuristic for public administration. The NPS is an “emerging movement” a reaction against the business like ideas of ‘the New Public Management’ focusing on the people as customers (Denhardt and Denhardt 2007). Denhardt and Denhardt (2007) emphasize that the public needs to be treated as citizens and public administration need to empower the citizens. Candler and Dumont (2010) asserts that Denhardt and Denhardt focus on the ideas of “democracy” and “citizen” in government activities like the private sector focusing on “market” and “customers.

Similarly, excellence in organizations has been perceived to have the following attributes: purpose-driven (i.e., goal-centric); customer-centric (i.e. citizen-centric); process-oriented; and structure-supported (Emersen and Harvey 1996). Mittal et al. (2004) proposed the establishment of a collaborative, externally focused segment-centric model. The segmented approach relies on customer needs. On the other hand, others feel citizens must be treated as stakeholders (Carroll 1996). Freeman (1984) concludes that by taking a stakeholder approach, e-governance promotes social responsibility and collective action. E-governance can help in the achievement of the goal of citizen-centered government. The governments must be responsible to create the opportunities so that people can participate actively in the political process.

socIal medIa Social media include popular networking applications such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram, as well as wikis, and media-sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr. According to Bertot et al. (2010), social media has four major potential strengths: collaboration, participation, empowerment,