Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-30-2026
Abstract
Social media platforms offer valuable tools for public administrators seeking to assess public sentiment on policy issues, especially in urban areas with diverse stakeholder interests. This study investigates how public administrators can leverage social media by comparing communications on Reddit’s discussion forum platform with X’s microblogging platform. I hypothesize that Reddit fosters more subjective, nuanced discussions, providing richer insights into public sentiment. To test this, sentiment and regression analyses are conducted on communications about urban cycling on both platforms. Results indicate that while Reddit facilitates deeper exploration of public issues, X also effectively assesses public sentiment. The study concludes by discussing how public administrators can effectively leverage insights from different social media platforms to advance the public interest.
Comments
This article was originally published in Journal of Public Interest Communications, available at https://doi.org/10.32473/jpic.v10.i1.p29
This work is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).