Leveraging social media to achieve a community policing agenda

Effects of Symbol Sets and Needs Gratifications on Audience Engagement: Contextualizing Police Social Media Communication

“…We asked each interviewee a series of prespecified questions related to their department's social media policies and activities. More details can be found in another paper (Williams et al, 2018).…”

“…In addition, our personal relationships provided us with the opportunity to interview their officers and personnel who managed their social media presence. Findings from the analysis of qualitative interview data are reported in a different paper (Williams, et al, 2018). Table 1 reports basic sample statistics about each of the five towns including area, population, median income, median age, percent of residents of 25 years or older with bachelor's degree or higher, police department budget, and the number of Facebook friends at the time of data collection.…”

“…These activities may help increase public awareness and build trusting relationships with the community. However, despite widespread recognition of social media's growing importance in community policing 1 and a desire to leverage social media, law enforcement agencies lack training, and have few personnel (and little if any budgetary means) to support social media initiatives, routine messaging activities, or interventions (Williams, Fedorowicz, Kavanaugh, Thatcher & Haughton, 2015). The significant role played by social media in crises such as the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California, in Brussels, Belgium, and in Manchester, England further highlight the importance of understanding how law enforcement agencies and the public use and respond to these communications (Athans, 2017;Braziel et al, 2016;Reisinger, 2015).…”

“…Many departments view social media as a stand-alone tool that is not typically integrated into police functions or organizational practices and processes. Interview and survey data show that many police departments are only minimally aware of best practice guidelines, often lack articulated goals, objectives, or strategic plans, and rarely identify or assess the value-added aspects of social media use (Williams et al 2015). Many police departments are still developing organizational policies concerning social media use (11.7% in process; 10.5% lacking).…”

User roles for emergency management in social media: Understanding actors' behavior during the 2018 Majorca Island flash floods

“…They make assumptions about who the actors they listen and write to are and how they could be reached to spread their messages more efficiently ( Mergel, 2013a ; Panagiotopoulos et al, 2017 ). Hence, knowing more about “who is there?” can be key for defining goals, contents and measurement systems ( Picazo-Vela, Gutiérrez-Martínez, & Luna-Reyes, 2012 ), to promote participation and engagement ( Bonsón, Royo, & Ratkai, 2015 ), drive innovation ( Mergel, 2013b ; Criado, Sandoval-Almazan, & Gil-Garcia, 2013 ) and help policy-makers to gain valuable insights ( Panagiotopoulos et al, 2017 ; Williams et al, 2018 ), among other benefits. Despite the importance that this process of audiences' classification might entail in the study of social media, public sector scholars need to foster the attention to understand audience composition and their behaviors ( Mergel, 2013b ; Panagiotopoulos et al, 2017 ).…”