Abstract: The study aims to reveal the role of social mediaand its influence on information sharing within publicorganizations and emphasis on the distribution affordanceto facilitate information processes. Existing literatureemphasized different aspects of social media in the publicsector to promote the relationship between governmentand citizens or provide better public service, for example,innovation, policies, openness, and communication.However, there is a wide gap in the literature to investigatesocial media use and information sharing within publicorganizations. The current study tries to accomplish thegoal by conducting semi-structured interviews with 15employees in public organizations in Chaohu city, Chinaand applying content analysis on the interviews. Despitethe existing literature, the targeted group for this study isdivided into three levels (i) senior-level, (ii) middle-level,and (iii) junior-level employees to get a better view ofsocial media. The study is based on grounded theory forcoding analysis. We provide an overview of social mediause within Chinese public organizations and discussfive social media affordances involved in the publicorganizations. Finally, we provide the implications,limitations, recommendation, and future research of thisresearch area.

Keywords: social media, social media affordance,public organizations, information sharing, informationdistribution