Abstract

The rapid adoption of social media by public administrations deserves attention from the side of institutional information and communication. One of the points recently identified is the tone used by public sector organizations to deliver their messages, as it may encourage citizen collaboration and participation. This paper explores the tone that Spanish city councils with more than 50,000 inhabitants are using in their social media profiles. This paper is based in two research questions: (a) What is the general tone used by the city councils in their use of social media?; (b) What explanatory factors are behind the adoption of one tone or another? Studying Twitter through big data techniques and statistical analysis, this study finds a positive general communicative tone. Traditional organizational, institutional and environmental factors do not seem to have a statistical significant influence over the tone. This article concludes with proposals for improvement on future research derived from the research results.