What Are the Police Doing on Twitter? Social Media, the Police and the Public

Abstract

This article examines the growing interest since 2008 of UK police forces in the use of social media as a basis for engagement with the public. This interest is set in the context of a political agenda for increasing public trust and confidence in the police and enlistment of the public as jointly responsible for crime reduction. An ambitious national police agenda led by the Association of Chief Police Officers has promoted the use of social media to engage groups previously uninvolved in discussion of local policing, and has envisaged its use as a basis for deliberation about priorities. This article investigates how successful this endeavour has been, and how far a hierarchical organisation ‐ the police service ‐ has been able to exploit the networked characteristics of social media and the potential of user created content. The paper analyses the police use of one particular platform, Twitter, including the structure of networks and the content of the messages. The article concludes that the constraints of police culture have meant that Twitter has been used cautiously and as a reinforcement for existing means of communication. It puts forward key issues which need to be addressed if the more ambitious aims for social media are to be achieved.

(Re)presenting ‘order’ online: the construction of police presentational strategies on social media

“…'Humour is really important', noted one participant 'demonstrating that you are human, to hook people and keep them' (INT3). However, as the Bordesley Green 10 Most notably, perhaps, on October 14-15, 2010, the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) published a short message about every incident notified to their control room over that 24-hour period to, according to the chief constable, raise awareness of the diverse and complex role of policing, explaining how much time officers spend with non-crime matters (Crump, 2011). This contributed to the public debate about police funding and the impact of the Government's 2010 spending review (and increased the Following of that account from 3,000 to 17,000) (Crump, 2011). to screwball, to scatological or race humor -can all function to give off the wrong impression.…”

“…However, as the Bordesley Green 10 Most notably, perhaps, on October 14-15, 2010, the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) published a short message about every incident notified to their control room over that 24-hour period to, according to the chief constable, raise awareness of the diverse and complex role of policing, explaining how much time officers spend with non-crime matters (Crump, 2011). This contributed to the public debate about police funding and the impact of the Government's 2010 spending review (and increased the Following of that account from 3,000 to 17,000) (Crump, 2011). to screwball, to scatological or race humor -can all function to give off the wrong impression. Since humour can cause offence; erode the authority those who use it; and, undermine any reputation that an actor has for good judgement (Lyttle, 2006), employing humour in professional settings is potentially ill-advised.…”

“…Although social media could be (and is) used by many different actors within constabularies to facilitate different outcomes, the explosion of police expression on social media should be understood within the context of the deployment of community policing teams in the UK and around the world (Crump, 2011) 5 . Community policing aims to facilitate interaction between police officers and citizens, to co-opt citizens into the enactment of crime control and to marry policing and community priorities (Manning, 1991;Barlow and Barlow, 1999;Maguire and Wells, 2002;Bullock, 2014).…”

Policing cyber-neighbourhoods: tension monitoring and social media networks

“…The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA 2010) report Engage: Digital and Social Media for the Police Service outlines the ACPO strategy on the use of social media to engage with the public to better inform and support neighbourhood policing. Crump's (2011) evaluation of the Engage strategy identified that as of October 2010, 30 police forces had a corporate twitter account, as did 140 neighbourhood and local policing teams. The main uses of accounts included patrol updates on ongoing or concluded cases, requests for information from the public and partnership management (with other emergency services, local authorities, educational establishments, etc.).…”

De twitterende wijkagent en het veiligheidsgevoel van de burger

“…Aangezien de inzet van sociale media door de politie nog relatief nieuw is, is er nog niet veel grondig onderzoek verricht naar de effecten. Een Britse studie naar het gebruik van Twitter door politieagenten (Crump 2011) laat zien dat Twitter, ondanks de ambities van de politie om het medium in te zetten om interactie met en betrokkenheid van de burger te stimuleren, vooral effectief wordt gebruikt als extra kanaal om burgers van informatie te voorzien. Dit geldt met name bij incidenten; daar blijkt Twitter zeer effectief bij het informeren en organiseren van grote groepen mensen.…”