www.donau-uni.ac.at/cedem

1. An Analysis of Japanese Local
Government Facebook Profiles
Muneo Kaigo & Sae Okura
University of Tsukuba
This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 25330394.

2. 概要
Start February 1, 2012
Management
Municipal Govt. of Tsukuba (Civic
Activities Dept.)
Target Area Tsukuba, Ibaraki
Social Experiment Profile
facebook.com/tsukuba.hiroba

3. Total
・Participants (Likes) 2667 (Dec 6, 2016)
Current Demographics of Users
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Female Male
Tsukuba Ibaraki Other
• Is “2000” users the magic number?
• 2011 – Twitter (Tsukuba)
• 2014 – Facebook (Tsukuba)

4. • Establishment of a collaborative relationship between the public sector and
the private sector is a vital issue. One way to mediate the government
sector with the private sector is through social media such as the
Facebook. Social media is one potential enabler of this kind of “Open
Government” and expands possibilities for residents to be more involved in
providing public services and affect policy decisions. Through a text mining
of all available 425 Facebook pages run by Japanese local governments,
this study examines how these social networking sites are being used by
local governments to create a more collaborative relationship between the
private sector and what policy areas tend to get more fans/followers and
engagement on Facebook. This study found that the number of
fans/followers and level of engagement of Facebook pages run by Japanese
local governments are determined by policy areas.

5. Research Questions
• RQ1: What is the major focus of local governments in Japan when
they use Facebook?
• RQ2: What policy area focused by a local government Facebook page
accumulates more fans?
• RQ3: What policy area focused by a local government Facebook page
accumulates more engagement?

6. Data Collection
• To analyze the focus of each local governments’ Facebook page, we used a
list provided by the Regional SNS Research Group (Chiiki SNS Kenkyukai)
that has a “List of local governments’ Facebook page in Japan. (1)
prefectural governments, (2) municipalities in prefectural capital cities and
designated cities (the redundant pages with prefectural governments were
removed), (3) Tokyo’s 23 special wards, and pages put on news sites.
• A total of 466 Facebook pages are listed. We removed 38 pages that were
defunct and 3 pages that were being operated by individuals, not
governments. Through this process, we had a remaining total of 425
Facebook pages.
• Facebook Profiles
• Data Extraction by Blockspring from July 7th, 2016 to July 15th, 2016

7. Analysis: KH Coder
• Morphological analysis for the Japanese language utilizing the ChaSen
morphological analysis tool developed by the Nara Institute of Science and
Technology
• Determined co-occurrence patterns in the paragraphs of the text provided in the
Facebook profiles
• The text is analyzed based on the following rules to enhance the accuracy of
analyzing Japanese.
• (1) The words with inflections are taken out after they are changed to the basic
forms.
• (2) The general words that are used in any sentences such as postpositional
particles and auxiliary verbs are omitted from the target of analysis.
• Only “nouns” and “suru verbs” (verb formed by adding "suru" to a noun in
Japanese) are counted because our main focus is to discover the policy areas that
local governments are focusing on.

8. Results
• Our study has discovered that Japanese local governments use Facebook for (a)
agriculture, (b) environment, (c) enterprise, (d) civic engagement, (e)
employment, (f) agriculture and forestry, (g) industrial development, (h) sports, (i)
childcare (j) art and culture, (k) tourism and (l) public relations as their focused
policy areas. In answering RQ1, among these policy areas, community
development and community promotion are the most common policy areas. In
regards to RQ2 that makes an inquiry into which area of policy tends to
accumulate more fans, employment, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, childcare,
education, and learning were found to have a small-scale fan base, whereas
tourism and public relations have a large-scale fan base. In regards to RQ3 that
inquires which area of policy tends to accumulate more engagement, we found
that most policy areas have low engagement, although childcare, education and
learning have mid-size engagement and public relations had relatively higher
engagement. We can also suggest that the number of fans do not influence the
amount of engagement.

9. Results
• For practitioners that operate local government Facebook pages, an
appropriate number of fans (fan base scale) according to each focus
policy area can be suggested by the result of this study. Figure 6
illustrates the findings of this study on how the number of followers
and engagement fluctuate depending on each policy area. In other
words, this study found that the number of fans or followers and level
of engagement are determined by the focused policy area.

10. An Analysis of Japanese Local
Government Facebook Profiles
Muneo Kaigo & Sae Okura
University of Tsukuba
mkaigo@japan.tsukuba.ac.jp