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Public Money & Management
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpmm20
Debate: Improving communication effectiveness
or wasting taxpayers’ money? The use of social
media influencers in public organizations
Raphaël Zumofen & Vincent Mabillard
To cite this article: Raphaël Zumofen & Vincent Mabillard (21 Sep 2023): Debate:
Improving communication effectiveness or wasting taxpayers’ money? The use of
social media influencers in public organizations, Public Money & Management, DOI:
10.1080/09540962.2023.2257453
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2023.2257453
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa
UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group
Published online: 21 Sep 2023.
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Debate: Improving communication effectiveness or wasting taxpayers’money?
The use of social media influencers in public organizations
Raphaël Zumofen
a
and Vincent Mabillard
b
a
Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP), University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, and School of Health Sciences, HES-SO
Valais-Wallis, Sion, Switzerland;
b
Solvay Brussels School of Economics & Management, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
Introduction
Recently, many organizations have identified social media
influencers (SMIs) as relevant communication
intermediaries, mostly because they provide access to and
influence hard-to-reach stakeholders, for example teenage
and young adult consumers. Research on SMIs has defined
them as ‘third-party actors that have established a
significant number of relevant relationships with a specific
quality to and influence on organizational stakeholders
through content production, content distribution,
interaction, and personal appearance on the social web’
(Borchers & Enke, 2021, p. 261). With their audience
considering them credible sources of information, SMIs can
provide valuable support to organizations, while equally
being a potential menace (Li, 2016).
Influencing in the public sector
While increasingly addressed in marketing and
communication studies, the role of SMIs is still almost
absent from the academic public administration literature.
Nevertheless, collaborating with SMIs has been one of the
recent avenues explored by public organizations to increase
communication outreach, approach citizens in a
personalized and emotional way, and create dialogic
communication and a sense of community (Reinikainen
et al., 2022). SMIs’selection relies on their distinct profiles
and follower segments, with the idea of targeting messages
at strategically-defined groups. Although they have been
slower to adopt SMIs within their communication strategies,
public organizations tend to mimic practices found in the
private sector, since they increasingly turn to SMIs to
prevent certain types of behaviour or change them,
strengthen their legitimacy, or promote themselves.
However, risks may also arise, since tailored posts for
public organizations will most likely contrast with usual
influencer content and potentially undermine content
coherence—a key factor of SMI effectiveness (Pöyry et al.,
2021). The contrast with the usual tone used for official
communication might confuse citizens. Therefore, it is
worth considering how much authority and control (over
their messaging) public organizations retain, as they have
no power over the past, present, and future content
created by SMIs. They could therefore potentially be
associated with that content once a collaboration has
started. This ‘indirect endorsement’is not limited to the
public sector, but it is amplified because inappropriate
content or negative press might damage the
administrations’image and create dissatisfaction among the
taxpayers.
As observed in different campaigns, the content created
by SMIs for public organizations does not necessarily draw
the expected attention, foster engagement, nor increase
interactions. Moreover, it raises ethical questions about the
use of public funds. Often initiated during the Covid-19
health crisis to reach a specific audience, this new tendency
regularly upsets public opinion and damages the image of
public organizations. This relates to at least four elements:
.Use of influencers that already raise similar content on
their channels for free (health prevention or sport
promotion for example).
.Use of influencers who do not have an exemplary lifestyle
that matches the values of public authorities and appeals
to the majority of citizens.
.A lack of transparency about how, and how much, money
is spent on SMIs.
.More generally, citizens not wanting to see their money
spent on marketing and communication.
A trend here to stay
Governments need to deal with an increasingly online
communication environment, a growing number of people
getting informed on social media, and (especially young)
people who do not use traditional mass media like TV news
programmes and newspapers. Yet, public organizations have
traditionally used mass media and their own communication
channels to communicate. Campaigns have mainly been
informational in nature and have relied on one-way
communication through websites and press releases
(Werder, 2020). Today, this strategy is insufficient to reach all
target audiences, convey important public messages, and
build meaningful and trustworthy relationships with certain
citizens. Consequently, public organizations should be using
SMIs by public organizations, but under strict conditions.
Public organizations need to be careful about selecting their
SMIs; they need some control over the information diffused
in terms of the respect of key public values.
The risks mentioned above, and the mistakes observed in
certain communication campaigns that have used SMIs, for
example in Australia (Pishias, 2020) or in Indonesia (ICW,
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativesLicense (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/),
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PUBLIC MONEY & MANAGEMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2023.2257453
2020), result from having a weak legal framework in place, and
the fact that practice is ahead of theory. This calls for a better
understanding of SMIs in the public sector, through an analysis
of existing practices, and theoretical developments. In
addition to the above-mentioned points (for example SMIs’
selection), a more careful and effective spending of
taxpayers’money would require, for instance, to focus first
on raising awareness, or to prefer ‘microcelebrities’over
‘macrocelebrities’(stars with a large community). However,
transparency is still needed to better assess how much
money is spent on SMIs for each specific campaign. This
opacity has been observed in several cases, including in
Scotland despite freedom of information requests submitted
to the government (Scottish Government, 2022).
In conclusion, even if SMI communication is still limited in
the public sector, its use constitutes a natural extension of the
more traditional communication tools. It should not be
stopped, nor should it be considered as unethical. All
financial and management risks raised in this article should
be carefully considered; however, what matters in public
sector communication is to reach the citizens effectively,
whatever medium it may take.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Vincent Mabillard http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0064-3685
References
Borchers, N. S., & Enke, N. (2021). Managing strategic influencer
communication: A systematic overview on emerging planning,
organization, and controlling routines. Public Relations Review,47(3),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2021.102041
ICW. (2020, September 1). Government digital activities: reviewing social
media and influencer budgets. Indonesia Corruption Watch.https://
antikorupsi.org/en/article/government-digital-activities-reviewing-so
cial-media-and-influencer-budgets.
Li, Z. (2016). Psychological empowerment on social media: who are the
empowered users? Public Relations Review,42(1), 49–59.
Pishias, C. (2020). Influencer marketing—is it appropriate in the public
and third sectors? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/influencer-
marketing-appropriate-public-third-sectors-pishias/.
Pöyry, E., Pelkonen, M., Naumanen, E., & Laaksonen, S. M. (2021). A call for
authenticity: audience responses to social media influencer
endorsements in strategic communication. International Journal of
Strategic Communication,13(4), 336–351.
Reinikainen, H., Laaksonen, S. M., Pöyry, E., & Luoma-Aho, V. (2022).
Conquering the liminal space: Strategic social media influencer
communication in the Finnish public sector during the COVID-19
pandemic. In Social Media for Progressive Public Relations (pp. 161–
175). Routledge.
Scottish Government. (2022). Breakdown of social media spend and
influencer information: FOI release. https://www.gov.scot/
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Werder, K. P. (2020). Public sector communication and strategic
communication campaigns. In V. Luoma-Aho, & M. J. Canel (Eds.),
Handbook of public sector communication (pp. 245–258). Wiley.
Raphaël Zumofen is a Research Fellow at the Swiss Graduate
School of Public Administration (IDHEAP), University of
Lausanne, Switzerland and at the School of Health Sciences of
the HES-SO Valais-Wallis in Sion, Switzerland. His research
interests include accountability, digital communication, and
management issues in the public sector.
Vincent Mabillard is an Assistant Professor at the Solvay
Brussels School of Economics & Management, Université
Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. His research focuses on
transparency, public sector communication, and place
branding strategies.
2R. ZUMOFEN AND V. MABILLARD
