Cliff Lampe of Michigan State University will deliver the next Faculty Guest Lecture at the School of Information on “Social Media and the Public Sector: Inherent Barriers to Adoption” when he visits Tuesday, March 15. Lampe’s talk will be at noon in the Ehrlicher Room, 3100 North Quad. All are invited.
Lampe is an assistant professor in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media at MSU. He earned his doctorate at the School of Information, and he also holds degrees from MSU and Kalamazoo College.
In describing his talk, Lampe says:
“Organizations that serve the public, including local units of government and nonprofit organizations, see potential in using social media to serve their residents. Seeking feedback on policies, organizing community events, and micro-broadcasting relevant news are just a few of the activities that these organizations feel social media can facilitate. While the external efficacy of these groups is high, and they believe these tools can improve their service, the internal efficacy is often low as the organizations struggle with how to use the tools.
“In addition, the complexity of of multiple constituents, changing policies, and embedded organizational structures of the public sector can hinder the use of social media to meet these collective action goals. This presentation will review several social media projects involving public sector outreach. We’ll focus in on one project, a crowd-sourcing application for a state-wide organization, with analysis of how inherent barriers affected the use and adoption of the application. Using content analysis, interviews, and surveys in a context of action research, we’ll examine a case where social media was not successfully used, and what contributed to that outcome.”
