Reputation management in online social networks for governmental actors: opportunities and threats

The paper discusses the role of social networks as factors of restoring and maintaining balance in a system of communication marked of conflicts and biased attitudes. Online social networks offer for governmental actors the possibility to interact in a two-way model with publics, transforming “politics” in “policies” by stimulating feed-back and participation. The data was collected from an empirical case, a project of reputation management for a minister in a former government in a South-Eastern European country. Findings show that social networks’ communication might have a strong internal and external impact, but the extent of the impact depends on several independent factors, as the previous reputation or the media agenda.