With nearly 190,000 publications in the first quarter of 2022
Digital is a formidable communication tool for public authorities. In recent years, the government’s presence on digital channels has increased significantly. The objective is to create a close link with the citizens. To measure the evolution of this communication device, the Observatory of digital public opinions recently published its barometer for the year 2022 analyzing the government’s digital footprint from January 1 to March 31 of the same year.
The digital communication of public actors is an increasingly recurrent subject in the Moroccan context. It must be said that in its complexity, the digital revolution has generated a diversification of digital communication channels where social networks are a major player.
It is clear that some public actors have invested in this field to create a social link with citizens. At present, public communication accompanies the exercise of power. It allows the citizen to be informed of the action of the community, the measures decided and the services offered. In this sense, each ministry has a page on social networks, especially Facebook, to inform citizens regarding the projects and the latest activities of the ministry.
Social networks, a privileged means of communication
“A digital footprint is a quantitative measure of the presence of an ‘entity’ across all social media, blogs, forums, digital press, and websites, expressed as the number of people reached by posts regarding it.
This barometer compares the digital footprints of the various governmental actors and the developments”, indicates the same source. It shows that the head of government dominates the government’s digital footprint even if it is down 26% compared to the last quarter of 2021. Thus, 334 million people affected correspond to what each Moroccan with access to the Internet , will have stopped on more than 13 publications quoting the head of government.
The Ministry of Health comes second with 251 million people affected. It is still driven by publications on Covid, even if there is a rapid decrease (-29%), followed by the Ministry of National Education, Preschool and Sports with 115 million people concerned, down 32% compared to the same period last year. Three ministries are approaching the mark of 100 million people affected, they are foreign affairs, equipment and water, and the interior. In this scheme, the Ministry of Equipment and Water achieves strong growth (+114%) compared to the last quarter of 2021. Social networks concentrate the largest number of people affected, in particular Facebook.
Towards proactive digital public communication
In order to assess the digital presence of ministries on social networks, the Observatory of digital public opinions focused on their activity on Facebook by analyzing their volume of publications, namely posts and the level of interaction generated by this activity in relation to citizens.
From January 1 to March 31, the Ministries of Habous, Equipment and Water, Industry, and Commerce make up the top three with strong activity on Facebook. These three ministries will have “spoken” more than 12 times a day during the first quarter of 2022. “It should be noted that in terms of content, the Ministry of Equipment and Water seems to have a strategy of information that can be described as “service to citizens” by communicating on weather forecasts, road cuts for maintenance and important alerts in addition to the other activities of the ministry”, reports the same source.
In addition, half of the publications of the Ministry of Health on Facebook are on the epidemiological situation (Covid-19 in Morocco) and the figures concerning it. This evaluation also makes it possible to compare the commitment of the community of each ministry, and therefore the relevance of the content posted. “The higher the commitment, the more the dialogue between a ministry and the citizens is created”, indicate the directors of this barometer, adding that for methodological reasons, a comparison of interactions was made for 1,000 fans, which allows to neutralize the differences in the number of fans between each Facebook page. From there, it turns out that the first three places are occupied by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, as well as the Ministry of Equipment and Water accompanied by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Therefore, these three departments hold a 60% share of all interactions of the top 10 departments.