## 4 Analysis and Findings
### Media Relations  
The devising of apps competitions reflects the online foundations and drivers of open data and the potential for mobility and participation to drive innovative usage and deployment. While most local apps competitions, such as the Edmonton example, have played an important experimental purpose, a key challenge has been in mobilizing public awareness and involvement in such initiatives. Governments, at all levels, thus often find themselves deploying efforts via traditional communications and media channels to attempt to raise awareness and spur activity in online spaces. In this regard, the importance of media relations to open data is an important observation underscored by [PERSON] in his own advice to the Government of Canada with respect to their own efforts [28]. He explicitly evokes the British newspaper, The Guardian and its data repository as an example of how government efforts can benefit from such third party outreach and linkage [29]. In a similar manner, many American municipalities, including the aforementioned Salt Lake City have deployed open data platforms devised by third party, civic organization devoted to such efforts (in this example, the organization Code for America is also an open source proponent as well, seeking to apply such principles to government and democratic reform around the world, particularly for cities [30]). The main point here is that in order to spur open data usage and innovation, government cannot do so alone but rather must situate their efforts within an information polity or eco-system emphasizing collaboration and interdependence. Therefore, how governments align with and make use of both traditional media and new social media venues is crucial to open data undertakings and the wider pursuit of innovative and open governance systems. While often viewed as separate topics within the rubric of Gov 2.0, open data and social media and online engagement are, in fact, closely intertwined, a point implicitly made in [PERSON] and [PERSON]'s aforementioned presentation of ubiquitous engagement. A challenge, however, is that social media is most often viewed by governments as a communications vehicle, one meant to push information and awareness rather than generate spaces and opportunities for listening and involvement [31]. As explained further below in terms of political culture, the ramifications of this point are often further accentuated at national levels. Open data can thus become tainted as government propaganda rather than a genuine attempt to engage, a point underscored by research in the US demonstrating how transparency of government data does not in itself directly yield greater levels of public trust but instead can often erode such levels if pursued through more traditional approaches to information management and communications [32]. Conversely, research undertaken in various European locales demonstrate how social media engagement can be enhanced through a virtuous cycle of traditional media deployment (to generate awareness and third party interest and greater collective learning, in a manner not unlike the British Guardian example above) and new social media venues allowing for direct public input and involvement in policy-making and service design [33]. Likeminded research further underscores that in capturing value from social media engagement, new data analytics are an essential competency for government to partake in this new online and data-driven space, less from a communications perspective and more in terms of understanding and capturing the benefit flows from the collective intelligence of this information eco-system and its various stakeholders including the citizenry [1]. Consequently, whereas open data has largely been pursued as transparency-driven effort incrementally altering the information management and communications architecture of governments, if it is to be a driver of innovative and open governance, a more novel and multi-faceted engagement architecture is required.