Public relations in local governments: Investigation of facebook accounts in the context of two-way symmetrical model

Municipalities are known as the closest public institutions in the provision of services in local governments. Within the municipalities, metropolitan municipalities have a special and priority place due to the size of geographical area, high population and economic and social development. Municipalities have to have close relations with the public as they have a service concept. In this respect, it can be said that the Vocational Courses of the Metropolitan Municipality are important communication area where the interaction between the municipality and the people is intense. It is possible to conduct this communication correctly and effectively through public relations studies. In recent years, the working principles of public relations have changed with the development of communication technologies and as a result of it, the emergence of new media. In addition, organizations benefit from social media in order to communicate faster, easier and in two ways with their target audiences. Facebook, which is one of the social media tools, provides the infrastructure for two-way symmetrical model which is one of the public relations models of Grunig and Hunt by enabling mutual communication with its features. In this thesis, fifteen of the twenty-one Metropolitan Municipality Vocational Courses with corporate Facebook accounts were analyzed on the post-evaluation and post-evaluation tab between August 1, 2018 and July 31, 2019 on the use of two-way symmetrical model. In the light of the findings; It is concluded that the two-way symmetrical model is not sufficient to implement because of the fact that Metropolitan Municipality Vocational Training Courses which are examined are insufficient to communicate adequately with the target audience through the posts and evaluations tab in the Corporate Facebook Accounts. Keywords: Local Governments, Public Relations, Metropolitan Municipality Vocational Courses, Two-Way Symmetrical Model, Facebook.