Mind the gap: Local government communication strategies and Spanish citizens’ perceptions of their cities

• Gap analysis between stakeholders’ perceptions and city communicators’ strategy priorities is a useful approach to understanding aspects of city reputation.
• Gaps exist between citizens’ perceptions of and the city managers’ accounts of their achievements, aims and priorities in the two Spanish cities analyzed (Vitoria and Malaga).
• Less wealthy Malaga was more content with the information received from its government and a more wealthy Vitoria critical of what citizens consider the government's self-congratulatory messages, suggesting that more research should be carried out to contribute to the practice of communication for a better balance between government information and persuasion.
• The explanations and causes of these gaps are multiple including flawed processes for government's definitions of priorities, ineffective communication strategies that fail to correlate messages with actions and inadequate attempts by local governments to be in line with citizens’ expectations and understand their citizens’ needs and priorities.
• The multicausality of gaps between the public's and city managers’ perceptions suggests that local government communicators should monitor more closely the environment in which they operate to ensure that they have mechanisms to understand citizens’ needs and expectations.

Cities have become the chief place of residence and work of the majority of the world's citizens and engines of regions’ prosperity. Understanding how city reputation – a key intangible good- is constructed is an important challenge for academics and a range of other stakeholders. Politicians and officials seek to position and manage their cities in ways that win legitimacy and trust for themselves and prosperity for their citizens and other stakeholders. This study develops understanding of the concept of city reputation through a multi-methods empirical study of two medium-sized Spanish cities where earlier research has shown there are gaps between government performance (as attested to by performance data on a series of city services), city communicators’ accounts of their communication strategies and policy priorities and citizens’ perceptions of their cities’ reputation and performance. Based on semi-structured interviews and focus groups, the reasons for these gaps are explored. The paradox of a less wealthy Malaga more content with the information it receives from its government and a more wealthy Vitoria critical of what citizens consider the government's self-congratulatory messages, suggests that more research should be carried out to understand both how government communication can achieve a better balance between information and persuasion and the importance of expectations and perceptions in citizens’ satisfaction with government communication and governments themselves.