A critical examination of social media adoption in government: Introducing omnipresence

•Omnipresence explains the potentially disengaging effects of social media use with government.•Participation in a digital age could become passive rather than co-creative.•A panopticon-like state fosters an appearance of openness.•Questions based on the theoretical constructs given are provided.

As government agencies at every level are adopting social media tools, scholarship is emerging that indicates dialogic potentials meant to increase citizen engagement might not be met. With that premise, we take a critical examination of the way social media can increase capacity for engagement rather encourage collaboration, depending upon the way the tools are constructed. To do so, we expand Lippmann's notion of the phantom public to introduce the theoretical constructs of Omnipresent Citizens and Omnipresent Administrators. These people are everywhere but nowhere and embody characteristics of accessibility, desire to participate, and the possibility of remaining anonymous. Each has implications for citizen participation.