Urban Digital Services in The Social Media Space: Communication Patterns, Thematic Priorities and User Reactions

P. 62–67.

Filatova Olga, Nizomutdinov B.

This study continues a series of papers analyzing the effectiveness of the city's digital services ecosystem being developed by the St. Petersburg government. The empirical object in this paper is the "Unified Card of St. Petersburg» (UCP) smart card — a multifunctional electronic service that facilitates interaction between citizens and government agencies. Since social media serves as an important source of data in today's digital society, a study was conducted of user publication activity on VKontakte related to the implementation and use of the UCP. This study identified communication patterns and thematic priorities that influence user awareness and satisfaction. A total of 2,790 messages were collected from VKontakte user pages for the keywords "UCP" and "Unified Card of St. Petersburg." A quantitative content analysis was conducted, allowing the content of media messages to be examined by counting the frequency of occurrence of specific elements. In addition to content analysis, the study relies on open data, internal documents, expert interviews, and a number of other methods. The study demonstrates the successful integration of the Unified Card of St. Petersburg into the St. Petersburg media environment and provides valuable data for further analysis. The identified communication patterns, thematic priorities and user responses enable the development of strategically sound approaches to the
development and promotion of digital services, taking into account both strengths and areas for potential improvement.

Keywords: ecosystem, media environment, digital services

In book

Proceedings of the 2026 Communication Strategies in Digital Society Seminar (2026 ComSDS)

IEEE, 2026.