The Strategic Usage of Facebook by Local Governments: A Structural Topic Modelling Analysis

We examine the content of official Facebook pages of 502 Italian municipalities over the period 2016-2018, in order to identify the main topics discussed and empirically infer the motivations that lead municipalities to use Facebook. By performing a structural topic modelling analysis, consisting in an unsupervised machine learning procedure, we find that Italian municipalities mostly post on 5 semantically different topics, on their Facebook pages, and that each topic prevalence is positively associated with the most related municipal expenses per capita by function. Furthermore, additional covariates significantly influence each topic prevalence. Within the framework of the legitimacy theory, these results suggest a strategic usage of Facebook by Italian municipalities for self-promotion and political marketing, aiming to enhance their political legitimacy and consensus among citizens. Our findings contribute to the literature on voluntary e-disclosures of local governments and interactions between local governments and their citizens through social media. Therefore, they could have practical implications for public regulators, managers and other users of social media.