I examined the usability of online texts in my dissertation. I sketched five recommendations\u00a0<\/strong>for social media editors, based on my research\u00a0<\/strong>and on my article,\u00a0The City on Twitte<\/em>r. The five recommendations each appear as a Word of the Week.<\/p>\n First recommendation:<\/p>\n Increase interaction<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Social media is based on interaction. Characteristic features for interactive texts include\u00a0<\/strong>personal pronouns,\u00a0addresses,\u00a0questions, answers and requests: \u201dInfluence how and where you do your business\u201d or\u00a0<\/strong>\u201dAre we going\u00a0get all services\u00a0on our phones?\u201d. Interactivity also shows up in the ways that the writer invites the recipient to take an interest in the text.<\/p>\n Traditional one-way communication for the public sector tends to move to social media. Twitter communication from cities, for example, consists mainly of headline-like announcements. Standard practice for online official communications greatly influences how they express interactivity. On government sites, writers will\u00a0<\/strong>address the reader in the opening and in Q&A sections, but in the body of the text,\u00a0based on traditional official document style, it’s rare to find anything that directly addresses the reader.<\/p>\n While cities strongly emphasize interactivity in their own social media guides, in practice communication is still mainly one-way. This is especially true on Twitter, even though interactive tweets get more reactions and have more effect. Sharing press releases fails to either support discussion or democratize participation.<\/p>\n According to my research, social media updates include more interactive language features than other online texts. The use of a familiar channel\u00a0even\u00a0seems\u00a0to add interactive features to the updates.\u00a0<\/em>When it comes to social media\u00a0in general, having a direct connection for discussion tends to increase an official’s readiness to engage with readers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I examined the usability of online texts in my dissertation. I sketched five recommendations\u00a0for social media editors, based on my research\u00a0and on my article,\u00a0The City on Twitter. The five recommendations each appear as a Word of the Week. First recommendation: Increase interaction. Social media is based on interaction. Characteristic features for interactive texts include\u00a0personal pronouns,\u00a0addresses,\u00a0questions, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3676","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-english-en","7":"category-wordoftheweek-en","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3677,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3676\/revisions\/3677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}