Social media monitoring: Responsive governance in the shadow of surveillance?

Social media monitoring, which promises several advantages such as early warning and reputation management, is gradually becoming common practice in public organizations in the Netherlands. From a citizen’s point of view, it can contribute to the responsiveness of public policies. However, social media monitoring also poses questions in terms of transparency and privacy. This paper investigates four cases of social media monitoring by Dutch public organizations. Policy departments are more strongly orientated towards monitoring, whereas organizations involved in policy implementation seem to be more inclined to progress to webcare. The paper argues for more transparency on social media monitoring.