Main Article Content
Abstract
In the context of the conference’s topic of ‘Strategic Communication and Public Engagement’ comes this case study, which illustrates the creative use of social media in crowdsourcing ideas from the public with the goal of formulating government policy in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Unlike the usual model of top-down policy formulation in many developing countries, the UAE government adopted an experiment entitled ‘The UAE Brainstorming Session’, which is the country’s first technology-based citizen engagement event that leveraged the highly popular social media platforms to elicit ideas and suggestions about public services. Specifically, two under-performing national sectors were targeted; public health and education. Citizens and residents were invited to identify the main issues in these two sectors and offer their suggestions to address them. The UAE Prime Minister personally tweeted inviting everyone to participate. The public response to this initiative was substantial, with 82,000 new ideas delivered by several social media channels. A ministerial committee then shortlisted the best ideas, suggestions, and these were subsequently discussed in a strategic cabinet retreat. The next step was government approval of several initiatives, which were subsequently implemented. Lessons learned from this case study can be beneficial to many countries that are considering similar technology-based initiatives that utilize popular and accessible social media as public policy tools and instruments of citizen engagement.
Keywords: Strategic Communication; Citizen Engagement; Social Media; United Arab Emirates Government.Article Details
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References
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References
Berringer, J. (2007). Case Study Research: Principles and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 19-20.
Brabham, D. (2016). “Crowdsourcing in the Public Sector” (Public Management and Change). Washington, D.C.:Georgetown University Press. ‘Crowdsourcing on Freebase, licensed under CC-BY’ Accessed online at: http://mashable.com/category/crow dsourcing/.
Carroll, L. (2014). “Majlis to hashtag: new source of good ideas.” Accessed online at: http://www.thenational.ae/uae/techn ology/majlis-to-hashtag-new-sourceof-good-ideas, September 18, 2014.
Denscombe, M. (2007). The good research guide for small-scale social research projects. 3rd ed. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press. 52-63.
Hi, D. P. (2013). ‘Process of public policy formulation in developing countries, ‘International Conference on Public Policy. Accessed online at: http://www.icpublicpolicy.org/Policy -Design-Principles
Howe, J. (2006). The rise of crowdsourcing. Wired Magazine, 14(6), 1-4.
Mourtada, R. and Alkhatib, F. (2014). UAE Social Media Outlook: Increasing Connectivity Between Government and Citizen. Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government and Dubai Press Club.
Dubai. Olenski, S. (2015). 6 Ways to Use Crowdsourced Content in Your Social Media. Accessed online at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/so cial-business/2015-05-05/6-ways-usecrowdsourced-content-your-socialmedia
Howlett and Ramesh, (2003). “Studying public policy”. London: Oxford University Press.
Salem, F., Mourtada, R. and Al-Shaer, S. (2014). ‘Citizen Engagement and Public Services in the Arab World: The Potential of Social Media.’ 6th Edition. The Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government, Dubai. Accessed online at: http://www.mbrsg.ae/getattachment/ e9ea2ac8-13dd-4cd7-9104- b8f1f405cab3/Citizen-Engagementand-Public-Services-in-the-ArabWorld.aspx
Sherman, A. (2011). The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Crowdsourcing. New York; Alpha Books (The Penguin Group). Pp. 3-4.
Spiegel, R. (2011). 3 Ways to Benefit From Social Media Crowdsourcing. Accessed online at: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com /3-ways-to-do-social-mediacrowdsourcing/.
Veal, A. J. and Darcy, S. (2014). Research Methods in Sport Studies and Sport Management: A Practical Guide. Routledge.
Zhao, Y. and Qinghua, Z. (2014). ‘Evaluation on crowdsourcing research: Current status and future direction,’ Info Syst Front, 16:417-434. Accessed online at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257574461_Evaluation_on_crow dsourcing_research_Current_status_a nd_future_direction