Understanding user participation in Australian Government tourism Facebook page

With Facebook being the largest social network site (SNS), can government use Facebook (FB) to increase citizen participation in delivering and promoting their services? This paper presents the case of government use of social media for tourism to provide a general understanding online government and user participation in the Tourism government FB page. This is a case study research into the government FB page of Tourism Australia. FB page wall posts and comments are analysed quantitatively using content analysis to determine what type of online participation is visible in these sites and what the agencies are trying to achieve. Further, the paper employed a spectrum of online engagement matrix to identify the type of engagement being attained by the page. Findings show that the page has successfully served as a platform for its audience to share their Australian experience and it is being used for the purpose of announcing, informing and involving type of online engagement. This is an example of a crowdsourcing endeavour where tourism experiences and stories and pictures are being sourced from public. The research contributes to gaining a better understanding of government FB phenomenon, in particular for Australian context.