Designing Social Media Policy for Government

Government agencies in the United States and around the world are increasingly looking to leverage social media to improve the quality of government services and enable greater citizen engagement. One central challenge that has emerged is the blurring line between the three types of social media use by government employees, namely agency use, professional use, and personal use. In this brief, the Center for Technology in Government at the University at Albany draws on its research on social media to clarify these different use types and why they matter for designing social media policy.