Using Facebook to enhance citizen engagement with local government in community development: a case study on Al-Qalyubia governorate in Egypt

Abstract EN

The purpose of this article is to gain a deeper understanding of the using Facebook to enhance citizen engagement with local government in community development in Egypt and identify the type of information that local government publishes on its Facebook page.

This paper presents a qualitative case study of the Facebook presence of the governorate and city of Al-Qalyubia, Egypt, one of the most prominent local governments on Facebook in the country.

Facebook page data were collected in the period January to April 2018.

A content analysis was performed on the data to explore categories and elicit meaning from the data collected.

Out of the 129 analyzed posts, the paper identifies 11 content categories for local governorate posts.

The frequency for content category reveals that the governorate is first of all using its Facebook page to promote different events, occasions, and issues inside the governorate.