Public Relations Review 41 (2015) 777–784 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Public Relations Review Mind the gap: Local government communication strategies and Spanish citizens’ perceptions of their cities Karen Sanders a,∗ , María José Canel b a CEU San Pablo University, Facultad de Ciencias de Comunicación y Humanidades, Universidad CEU San Pablo, Paseo Juan XXIII 10, 28040 Madrid, Spain b Facultad de Ciencias de la Información, Complutense University, Ciudad Universitaria, Avda Complutense, s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Available online 9 October 2015 Keywords: Government communication Communication strategies City reputation Gap analysis a b s t r a c t 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 per- formance. 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 car- ried 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. © 2015 Published by Elsevier Inc. 1. Introduction Reputation has emerged as a central concept for public sector public relations, raising issues related to governments’ responsibility and legitimacy and citizens’ trust in their local governments. While corporate reputation has been extensively studied by public relations scholars, more limited attention has been paid to the concept and construction of reputation as applied to cities and public sector organizations (Canel, 2009; Canel & Sanders, 2013). Furthermore, the reputation of public sector organizations is not formed in the same way as the reputation of corporations (Luoma-aho, 2007). Publics’ expectations of their public services and their public officials appear to impact in particular ways on the content of public sector reputation, although it should be noted that the research underlying these findings has been exclusively conducted in the Nordic cultural context characterized by high levels of trust in authorities and a strong welfare state (Luoma-aho, 2007, 2008; Luoma-aho, Olkkonen, & Lähteenmäki, 2013). ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 627757021. E-mail address: ksanders@ceu.es (K. Sanders). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.06.014 0363-8111/© 2015 Published by Elsevier Inc.