Social Media: Towards open government

An open government paradigm is based on transparency (public access to information about the work of the government), participation (citizen engagement in the creation of social policies) and collaboration (partnership and cooperation with citizens and private organizations). The use of social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) has potential to increase visibility and transparency of the work of government and to ensure communication channel for the idea and information exchange between government and citizen, making the process of creating policies more inclusive and increasing confidence between government and citizens. The goal of the paper is to explore and compare presence and activity on social media in those Western Balkans countries that were belonging to one state in the past (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). These countries were chosen because of a similar level of economic development and reforms in government institutions. The content analysis of their governments' websites was conducted, together with an analysis of links to social media platforms. The results show that these governments have links to social media on their websites, with Twitter and Facebook as the most used platforms. The frequency and the content of posts significantly vary from country to country, as well as the activities of citizens. Although chosen countries accept social media as a communication channel, there is still missing two-way communication with citizens. The governments mostly publish promotional information about their work, and the consequence is a relatively small number of friends/followers/subscribers and comments/shares/likes on social media.