Government microblogs highlight interaction with public

Government departments and officials are using their microblog accounts as channels to hear voices of the public and provide public services despite slow growth in account numbers, according to a report released on Tuesday.

The number of microblog accounts operated by government departments and individual officials increased by 46 percent in 2013, said the report issued by the E-Government Research Center with the Chinese Academy of Governance. It has issued the report annually since 2011.

The growth rate was mild compared with the 249 percent in 2012 and 776 percent in 2011, the report noted.

Verified government accounts on the four top microblog services in China -- Sina, Tencent, People.com.cn and Xinhuanet -- totaled about 258,700 by the end of 2013.

About 70.8 percent of them were operated by government departments and the rest were individual users whose identities were verified to be government officials.

The report attributed the slowdown to users shifting to new social network tools such as WeChat, an instant massaging application claiming to have about 400 million active users.

The reducing popularity of microblog services among ordinary Internet users dampened the governments' enthusiasm for launching blogs, said Wang Yimin, the research center's director.

However, Wang said the slower growth is to be expected and did not indicate that the government paid less attention to these platform.

Each year, the report selects the top 100 government microblog accounts that are considered best maintained.

In 2013, each account of the top 100 posted an average of about 10,000 entries, or 28 every day, up 30 percent over 2012. Each account recorded a total of 737,000 reposts annually on average, up 166 percent over 2012, and 206,000 comments, up 182 percent.

"We saw a notable tendency in 2013 for these government accounts to become much more interactive with Internet users than previous years," Wang said.

Government departments and officials have gained good experience in managing microblog accounts that can also be applied to WeChat accounts and other newer emerging tools, he added.

More efforts should be made to integrate different communication platforms, including traditional media, websites, microblogs and other social media, the report suggested.

It also highlighted continuing disparities among regions and government departments in terms of microblog use.

Governments in richer regions and bigger cities have proved more inclined to communicate with the people through microblogging, it said.

Among various government departments, police have been the most active bloggers, according to the report. Four out of the top 10 government microblog accounts were operated by police departments.