| Summary: | It has been widely acknowledged that Information and Communication Technologies play a significant role in enhancing transparency and accountability by facilitating an easier, faster, and more flexible flow of information. Social media is being used by governments to improve the accountability and transparency through both bottom-up and top-down mechanisms. This chapter presents a study on social media analytics to draw insights on how it can be used as an unconventional but promising approach for policy studies. This study examines and compares the result of a public perception survey of internet users in Seoul, Jakarta, and Singapore to map the communication patterns and engagement between citizens and government through social media platforms. From a bottom-up perspective, it is found that social media are crucial and preferable in facilitating political communication from the citizens to their government. However, when viewed through a top-down lens, skeptical opinions regarding the government�s intention to implement citizens� online aspirations to policymaking remain. The cases suggest that use of social media for city-level governance indeed enhances accountability in the �answerability� aspect and promotes transparency in the �dynamic� aspect of the government. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022.
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