The European Conference on the Social Sciences 2015, Brighton, United Kingdom
Official Conference Proceedings

The European Conference on the Social Sciences 2015, Brighton, United Kingdom
Official Conference Proceedings

The European Conference on the Social Sciences 2015, Brighton, United Kingdom
Official Conference Proceedings

The use of social media in governments is growing rapidly all over the world. Social
media provides public agencies with diverse tools that facilitate their engagement
with the public. However, social media raises different privacy, security and legal
issues that need to be addressed in proper policy guidelines. In Egypt, while social
media in government is relatively new, it is widely used at all levels of government.
By logging on Facebook or Twitter you can follow most of Egyptian ministries’
releases and news. However, the Egyptian government lacks having social media
policies that regulate the use of social media. After interviewing social media officers
in different Egyptian ministries, it has been found that they do not follow concrete
written policies that regulate public employees' use of social media. Being interested
in the power of social media in public agencies, this paper suggests a social media
policy that provides guidance on how public employees can efficiently and securely
use official social media to communicate with the public. To achieve this purpose, the
methodology adopted includes a review of the existing research on social media
policies, analysis of current social media policies in different countries, and
interviews with social media officials in a sample of Egyptian Ministries to examine
how they manage their use of social media. The proposed policy is flexible and can be
used by any public or even private organizations willing to use social media to
interact with their target audience.
Keywords: Social media, Policy, Analysis, Government, Egypt

Gehad Soliman Sayed Kenawy