Using Social Networks in Smart City: organizational challenges, synergies and benefits

The opportunities and challenges implied by the use of Social Networks to enable government initia-tives have been only partially investigated by e-government and e-participation studies so far. In this paper, we suggest that the potentially strategic role of Social Networks in the creation of public val-ue could be better understood by analyzing the possible synergies between these systems and Smart City strategies. The Smart City approach, in fact, considers the citizen’s quality of life as the final performance indicator, and is particularly suitable to exploit the interactive, collective, collaborative and bottom-up nature of Social Networks. We identify two key aspects of Smart City Social Net-works: performance measurement issues and organizational issues. Then, by proposing a three-steps model for Social Network adoption in Smart City programs, we suggest the conditions under which these systems can contribute to improved municipal services, enhanced civic engagement, and better reciprocal awareness between the citizens and the public or private organizations in charge of Smart City initiatives. The contribution of this paper and its novelty resides on the specific focus on the role of Social Networks in Smart City initiatives. To our knowledge there are no scientific papers till now facing this topic of using Social Networks to enhance Smart City strategies.