Media treatment of local crises on websites and social media pages

The study aimed to identify how the Ministry of Local Development and the governorates’ localities employ their websites and social media pages in managing and addressing local crises, by conducting an analytical study on both the ministry’s official website and the social media pages of the four main regions of Cairo Governorate to monitor the methods used by the ministry’s website and the localities’ social media pages to address local problems facing the public and the crises they face, and to measure the levels of interaction available with the public through these pages and the ministry’s official website, and to identify the positives and negatives of these pages and the ministry’s website in terms of technical and technological aspects as well as in terms of media coverage of local crises.
  The study sample was selected using a comprehensive inventory method of all posts published on the official website of the Ministry of Local Development, related to the crises faced by the ministry, as well as all posts published on the social media pages of Cairo Governorate in its four main regions (western, eastern, northern, and southern), and which addressed local crises during the period from July to December 2023. The total sample size was (454) posts on the pages, and (4) posts on the ministry’s website.
   The study reached a number of results, the most important of which are:
1-  The weakness of the structural structure in many of its components for all official pages of the four main regions of Cairo Governorate.
2-  It was found that the crises that dominated the official pages of the four regions of Cairo Governorate differed from one page to another, as each region suffers from crises different from the rest of the regions, although the crises (building violations, encroachments on the street) occupied the first and second places with high percentages in terms of the overall coverage of the study pages for them.
3-  The objectives of the crisis posts on the official pages of the four regions of Cairo Governorate focused on the media aspect of their achievements and activities.
4-  One of the points of distinction for the pages under analysis is their speed of response to crises with medium and high percentages, and the focus of all pages on two main strategies as communication strategies for crisis management, which are; the firewall and corrective actions strategies.
5-  The transparency methods followed by the pages in crisis management focused on the two methods of defining the crisis directly, and adhering to clarity and honesty in the information provided to users of the site or page. The results generally confirmed the weak interaction between the official pages and the public, and the lack of interest of those responsible for them in responding to their users’ comments
6-   As for the field of crises raised in the posts of the Ministry of Local Development’s website, it was found that the crisis topped the list, Prices are the area of ​​crises that the Ministry of Local Development website was interested in presenting, at a rate of 50%. The media objective topped the list of objectives for the content of the Ministry of Local Development website publications, at a rate of 100%.
7-The most used communication strategy in the Ministry of Local Development website publications was the firewall strategy, at a rate of 100%.