WHAT ALTERNATIVES FOR SOCIAL MEDIA DO PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS NEED? Developing a value proposition for public service social media design

In the digital sphere, public organizations rely on commercial social media platforms to interact with their communities. In this commercial online space, public values such as privacy, inclusion, or user autonomy, are increasingly under pressure. This study focuses on safeguarding public values in the design of a social media alternative. We examine how public values can be negotiated and anchored in the value proposition that informs the design of public service social media (PSSM). A value proposition specifies how value can be created for platform users by solving particular problems that users experience. There is a lack of empirical studies on how public values can be concretized and anchored in PSSM. To explore this, we deploy a user-oriented design thinking methodology in three different organizations to develop this public value proposition. Our results indicate that there is a need for both a generic value proposition that serves all types of public organizations and a specific value proposition for their user communities. We contribute to theory and practice with a three-step process for the development of such a public value proposition and make a first sketch of what elements it could comprise. As the antidote to commercial social media platforms, a public alternative would offer human (as opposed to automated) moderation, decentralized and local (as opposed to centralized and global) data storage, and privacy friendly and secure identification that does not build profiles of users.