Abstract
This study examined activity on the Facebook page “Tsukuba Civic Activities Cyber-Square” operated by the municipal government of Tsukuba with the cooperation of the University of Tsukuba and Intel Corporation. We investigated what elements would direct people interested in civic activities or civil society organizations to participate in this SNS page. This study compared the effectiveness between 1) advertisement campaigns and 2) face-to-face communication for promoting participation in SNSs and subsequent activity through the social network. Through this comparison, we observed that the clicks of the “like” button for the Tsukuba Civic Activities Cyber-Square and the “reach” of the page increased more during the advertisement campaign period. However, this study observed no increase in “actions” during the advertisement campaign period. In contrast, regardless of the number of participants, face-to-face communication facilitated through social events increased the number of “actions” in the Tsukuba Civic Activities Cyber-Square and “actions” increased even more prominently among those that previously clicked the “like” button for the Tsukuba Civic Activities Cyber-Square.
