Sociala medier revolutionerar kommunikationen. Eller...? : En studie av hur Jönköpings kommuns externa kommunikation har påverkats av användandet av socialamedier.

Sammanfattning: The aim of this master thesis was to examine how the use ofsocial media has influenced the way in which themunicipality of Jönköping communicates with the public andother stakeholders. To fulfill this aim the following twoquestions were formulated: How does the municipality ofJönköping use social media for its external communication?Has the external communication of the organization changedwith the use of social media? If so, how has it changed?The examination was carried out as a case study includinginterviews with six employees at different municipalitydepartments, who use social media for externalcommunication in their work.The theoretical framework was built mainly on differentperspectives of communication and a framework forcategorizing public organizations’ use of social media inthree different general purposes - representation, engagementand networking.The results of the study show that the municipality ofJönköping uses social media mainly for informationdissemination. To some extent it is also used for externalmonitoring and for trying to influence people’s attitudes andbehavior. The results further show that the use of socialmedia has not lead to any pervasive change of the externalcommunication of the organization. The communicationthrough social media to a large extent consists of onedirectionaltransmission of information, and at present thereseem to be only very limited ambitions to take the externalcommunication towards more of dialogue and interactivity.