Government Activities on Facebook: A Content Analysis of Selected Government Ministries’ Facebook pages in Bangladesh
Social media sites are the world’s biggest information dissemination platform and today’s we cannot imagine to share our any information without these sites. It has been a leading manifestation in our lives in the past several years. Various profit and non-profit organization in Bangladesh are using Facebook to promote their services and highlight their roles to community. Now, government different ministries have accepted the opportunities of using Facebook to deliver better services as well as engage with citizens. The present study intends to examine the government ministries’ Facebook pages in Bangladesh to explore what types of information are disseminated on their Facebook pages, how effective these pages are in reaching out to citizens as well as engagement. Qualitative content analysis of four selected government ministries’ Facebook pages has conducted to fulfill the research aims. Content analysis allows describing the material only on selected aspects, on the other hand method is highly flexible as coding frame is always adjustable to the material. The researcher has selected four ministries Facebook pages and among these pages, two are verified and another two pages are not verified. The researcher has developed the categories and codes according to fulfill the research aims. Data collection has started by identifying the usage Facebook of each ministries and found that each ministries has incorporated Facebook logo in their website. After that, the information provided on ‘about’ section was put down, the number of likes/followers, the existence of profile picture, cover photo, and other applications has been identified. The data collection for content analyses was conducted in six months posting messages between October 2017 to March 2018 were recorded as well as organized and analyzed by using Microsoft Office Excel program.