Sosiaalisen median hyödyntäminen nuorten palvelujen yhteiskehittämisessä (Using Social Media in Co-Creating Public Services)

Abstract

<p>Co-creation assumes an interactive and dynamic relationship where value is created at the nexus of</p><p>interaction. However, the evidence for co-creation – with or without digital technology – is limited.</p><p>Co-creating value is especially challenging with marginalized youths, those who appear to have</p><p>isolated themselves and reside outside the system, not wanting much from it, and distrusting its widely</p><p>accepted benefits. In this article, social media is seen as an underutilized resource for developing</p><p>services and, importantly, co-creating them with the users. It is believed that social media empowers</p><p>individuals to create and share content that the government cannot easily control. This article</p><p>approaches social media as a context from which it is possible to derive information that would</p><p>otherwise be unattainable. Using data from a Finnish discussion board, this article answers the</p><p>following question: How can the experiences of socially withdrawn youth shared on social media be</p><p>used to enrich the knowledge base on service co-creation processes? The empirical data consist of</p><p>messages on the Hikikomero discussion forum, which were analysed using a combination of</p><p>unsupervised machine learning and discourse analysis. The results show that social media provides a</p><p>window into the everyday lives of socially withdrawn youths, offering information that could be used</p><p>to develop public services.</p>