Social media data used in the measurement of public services effectiveness: Empirical evidence from Twitter in higher education institutions

Measuring public service effectiveness has become a central issue for public authorities worldwide, often driven by governmental pressures to ensure value for money. In this context, social media data represent a potential powerful tool in the hands of public authorities to support the evaluation of public service performance. By relying on an action research project in the higher education field, this study explores how social media data can contribute to measure service effectiveness by focusing specifically on Twitter in the higher education field. The final aim of the paper is to develop a set of measures, derived from Twitter data, to quantify the effectiveness of higher education services. This investigation supports a broader discussion about the extent to which social media data can contribute to performance measurement in the public sector.