This presentation explores and outlines how we can use social media conversation and social media metrics to understand how citizens value their PSM organisations in real time. This research focuses on the Australian context, and its public service media organisation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which relies on government funding to perform its day-to-day activities, including content production as per its legislated Charter. The research findings indicate there are new agents emerging in these social conversation spaces, recalibrating how users act, communicate and produce content. These new agents are cultural intermediaries who demonstrate high social capital, and are able to interact between distinct stakeholder groups, while negotiating appropriate online governance models, especially with social media ‘ad-hoc publics’ (Bruns and Burgess, 2011).
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson (Ph.D. 2013, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, QUT) lectures in Online and Social Media Communication at the University of Sydney. His current research explores everyday social media use, the role of social media influencers within co-creative environments, and how social media is used in cyber-terrorism. He is a trained ethnographer, has been published in many leading national and international journals, and is developing eResearch methodologies for social media network analysis. He tweets from @dhutchman.