1. A tale of two cities A comparative study of government use of social media in New York City and Shanghai Hong Shen [CAS587:Cuture As Data]

2. Twitter VS Sina Weibo TwitterWeibo startedJuly 2006August 2009 users500 million worldwide324 million in China character count 140 characters - amounting to one short sentence 140 Chinese characters – the equivalent of around 70 – 80 words Content of tweets Including text and links Including text, pictures, videos, links and long posts

3. Questions What types of information are shared by the cities governments on Twitter/Weibo? What are the similarities/differences? Discussion: How the differences of the two social media platforms have influenced the ways in which the two cities’ governments use the social media as a new way to implement e- government?

4. nycgov@twitter

5. shanghaicity@weibo

6. Method: content analysis  Data collection: Tweets/posts on both accounts from Aug 1 st to Aug 31 st in 2012  NYC: 167 tweets Shanghai: 524 posts Non-exclusive Categories:  Service information Traffic Information Weather Information City life/culture broadcasting Reply/Mention Retweet Links Others  Open coding approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998)

7. Main observations Reply/mention are extremely common on both accounts NYC has more tweets containing links. While NYC has more tweets on service information; Shanghai has more posts about city culture/life broadcasting Shanghai has more posts on traffic/weather information

8. Discussion Language: English VS Chinese Interface and functionalities: Sina Weibo is much more complex than Twitter While NYC’s use of social media focuses more on information sharing, social media works more like a promotional/branding tool for Shanghai