Small Cities, Big Engagement? A Dimensional Paradox in Datafied Local Political Communication in North-East Romania

(1) Background: Research on datafied political communication has concentrated on national electoral settings, although local government produces comparable behavioral trace data outside any electoral calculus. This study asks whether smaller local authorities, despite lower resources, outperform larger ones in participatory provision and citizen-initiated engagement. (2) Methods: In an exploratory regional design, we combine scoring institutional websites on five subdimensions (Information, Consultation, Deliberation, Decision, and Monitoring) with Facebook engagement metrics for 23 local public authorities in Romania’s North-East region, collected over a standardized 30-day window, and test whether population size predicts digital participatory performance. (3) Results: Population size does not positively predict the provision of participatory tools, but the aggregate association is not statistically significant (ρ = −0.25, p = 0.26) and the magnitude of the aggregate inverse trend depends on the weighting applied to the five subdimensions. The reversal established inferentially is confined to a single subdimension: Decision. Small cities are more likely to provide a basic decision-related tool (Fisher’s exact p = 0.017), which shows whether such a mechanism exists rather than its level of development. Small cities also generate more comments and shares on an ordinary day. Expressed relative to website audience, which is more than three times larger in the county-seat cluster, small-city engagement rates are higher on every indicator. The observation window nonetheless overlaps a time of national elections, so the Facebook results remain indicative rather than conclusive. (4) Conclusions: The results show that administrative-proximity drives digital engagement more effectively than resources, though the mechanisms of this were inferred rather than measured and the findings require replication in an electorally quiet period and on larger samples.