Opportunities, risks and challenges of using social media to foster smart governance for smart cities

Social media are increasingly used with different purposes, ranging from attempts to reach wider audiences, to attract different publics, to propose alternative means for interaction with citizens and/or other stakeholders. Apparently, there is an immense list of possibilities and there is potential to explore social media as one of the vehicles for providing smart governance for smart cities taking into account governance principles such as openness (i.e. transparency), accountability, collaboration (i.e. involvement of all stakeholders) and participatory processes (i.e. citizens' participation). This paper identifies the challenges, opportunities and risks of social media usage for smart cities to foster smart governance based on the scientific literature. Although we did not find many scientific papers about the role of social media for smart governance, interesting possibilities are addressed. In addition, there is a lack of empirical work. Our conclusions point out that we are in the infancy of this field, taking the first steps in leveraging the potential of social media on smart governance.