280 insulting characters? An analysis of the content of tweets addressed to the police in Canada and the United States

Travail dirigé présenté à la Faculté des arts et sciences en vue de l'obtention du grade de Maîtrise en criminologie, option criminalistique et information.Les réseaux sociaux tel Twitter sont de plus en plus populaires. Il n’est donc pas surprenant que la police s’engage sur ce terrain. Les réseaux sociaux permettent à la police de communiquer facilement avec la population dans un espoir d’amélioration de leur relation avec les citoyens qui peut parfois être tendue. Avec la démocratisation d’internet et l’avènement des réseaux sociaux, les incivilités qui auparavant étaient limitées au monde réel se sont transposées en ligne. La police est donc parfois la cible de ces cyber-incivilités. Bien que l’utilisation des réseaux sociaux par la police ait été étudié ces dernières années, la manière dont la population communique avec la police, surtout lorsqu’elle le fait de manière antagoniste, n’a été l’objet que de quelques recherches seulement. La présente étude cherche à combler ce manque dans la littérature en analysant ce qui est dit à la police sur le réseau social Twitter. Les tweets de janvier 2018 mentionnant les départements de police sélectionnés au Canada et aux Etats-Unis ont été collectés. Les résultats démontrent que certains départements de police sont plus mentionnés que d’autres (c’est que le cas du TPS et de la NYPD) mais aussi plus insultés que d’autres. La police se retrouve au milieu de tensions puisqu’elle est la cible de plusieurs insultes. Les tweets mentionnant la police ont les thèmes suivants : cas spécifiques, comportement de la police, politique, histoires locales mais sont également composés d’insultes gratuites, sans contexte. L’étude conclue que les tensions en ligne, qu’elles soient ponctuelles ou systématiques, répliquent les tensions locales déjà présentes hors ligne.Social media such as Twitter are becoming more popular. It is without surprise that the police would engage in this field. Social media allow the police to easily communicate with the population in the hope to ameliorate the relationship between the police and citizens, which can be tense at times. With the democratisation of the internet and the advent of social media, incivilities which were limited to the real world have been transposed online. The police are therefore sometimes the target of these cyber-incivilities. Even if the use of social media by the police has been studied in the last few years, the way the population communicates with the police, especially when they do in an antagonistic manner, has not been researched thoroughly. The present study aims to fill this literature gap by analysing what is said to the police on Twitter. Tweets from January 2018 mentioning the selected police departments in Canada and in the United States have been collected. The results show that some police departments are more mentioned than others (it is the case of the TPS and the NYPD) but also more insulted than others. The police are caught in the middle of tensions as they are the target of several insults. Tweets mentioning the police have the following themes: specific cases, police behaviour, politics, local news but are also comprised of plain insults, without context. The study concludes that online tensions, whether they are punctual or systematic, resonate the already existent offline local tensions

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

We propose a research model based on media synchronicity theory (MST) and examine how the use of different symbol sets (e.g., images and text) is related to audience engagement on social media. We include uses and gratifications theory (UGT) in the model to identify task characteristics that are relevant to message recipients in the specific context of community policing. Based on our analyses of Facebook posts by five police departments, we find first that, consistent with MST, posts conveying information garner more responses when accompanied by more natural symbol sets, and more textual content is preferred to less, but responses differ depending on the type of engagement: intimacy (likes), interaction (comments), or influence (shares). Second, posts intended for meaning convergence gratify the audience’s socialization and assistance needs and are positively related to intimacy and interaction. Finally, the fit between symbol sets and task characteristics impacts different dimensions of audience engagement. These findings provide empirical support for relying on MST when studying social media and for integrating with UGT to capture contextual task characteristics. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the implications of its findings for theory and offer recommendations for practice

Does social media promote the public’s perception of the police: Survey results on trust cultivation

Police departments use social media to inform the local community. Additionally, police share self-promotional information to enhance the public’s perception of law enforcement. Research using cultivation theory shows that reliance on a media source such as television cultivates viewer perceptions of a subject. We apply cultivation theory to this interactive medium to test whether viewing and responding to social media messages increases followers’ satisfaction with the police. Surveys administered online to the followers of four police departments show that followers who view and respond to police posts more frequently are also inclined to be more satisfied with the police. Minorities are less satisfied with police than whites, but not significantly so. Finally, followers who like (dislike) police self-promotion are more (less) satisfied with police. The findings provide partial support for applying cultivation theory to the social media setting and suggest that police use of social media can help achieve community policing goals

IT\u27S WHAT YOU WRITE and HOW YOU WRITE ABOUT IT: THE POLICING FACEBOOK EXPERIENCE

This study focuses on social media use by law enforcement agencies. Based on media richness theory, we examined how the responses to Facebook messages posted by five police departments vary by type of cue, image vs. text, and across different content categories. Our findings suggest that although messages with richer information, namely more visual and verbal cues, receive more likes, topics such as Accident, Traffic and Announcement receive significantly fewer likes. Moreover, the presence of pictures in announcement messages reduces the number of likes. In addition, although people comment on messages about Property/Pets, they are much less inclined to comment on other topics. Our study contributes to media richness theory by demonstrating the importance of considering the nature and context of a communication, as represented by the content category, and to law enforcement agencies\u27 practice by offering recommendations for how to measure public engagement and design strategies that will better leverage social media

Better Policing for the City of Buffalo: Toward Community, Transparency, and Justice

This policy brief was drafted by Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, Deputy Director at Partnership for the Public Good. It recommends that the Buffalo Police Department expand its community policing efforts through culture change and incentives, a diversified police force, increased training, improved transparency and oversight, more restorative justice and diversion programs, and the use of crime prevention through environmental design. The brief is based on “Collaboration, Communication, and CommunityBuilding: A New Model of Policing for 21st Century Buffalo,” a 2016 PPG report prepared by Sam Magavern, Steve Peraza, Kerry Battenfield, Caryn Blair, Erin Carman, Stephen Hart, Tina Meyers, and Sarah Wooton. It also draws on Open Buffalo’s Community Policing Survey data, collected from 2,018 residents of Buffalo in spring 2016. The research and strategies it sets out inform PPG’s work with Open Buffalo’s Justice and Opportunity Coalition. This table of community groups and individuals seeks an improved relationship between police and community, based on respect, trust, confidence, oversight, and mutual benefit

@Houstonpolice: an exploratory case of Twitter during Hurricane Harvey

Abstract Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the Houston Police Department (HPD)’s public engagement efforts using Twitter during Hurricane Harvey, which was a large-scale urban crisis event. Design/methodology/approach This study harvested a corpus of over 13,000 tweets using Twitter’s streaming API, across three phases of the Hurricane Harvey event: preparedness, response and recovery. Both text and social network analysis (SNA) techniques were employed including word clouds, n-gram analysis and eigenvector centrality to analyze data. Findings Findings indicate that departmental tweets coalesced around topics of protocol, reassurance and community resilience. Twitter accounts of governmental agencies, such as regional police departments, local fire departments, municipal offices, and the personal accounts of city’s police and fire chiefs were the most influential actors during the period under review, and Twitter was leveraged as de facto a 9-1-1 dispatch. Practical implications Emergency management agencies should consider adopting a three-phase strategy to improve communication and narrowcast specific types of information corresponding to relevant periods of a crisis episode. Originality/value Previous studies on police agencies and social media have largely overlooked discrete periods, or phases, in crisis events. To address this gap, the current study leveraged text and SNA to investigate Twitter communications between HPD and the public. This analysis advances understanding of information flows on law enforcement social media networks during crisis and emergency events

SUCCESSFUL PRACTICES FOR USING SOCIAL MEDIA BY POLICE DEPARTMENTS: A CASE STUDY OF THE MUNICH POLICE

Social media has become a key component of police efforts to achieve public safety goals. To be effective, police must establish guidance on the best way to employ this tool in differing circumstances. Social media crisis communication guidelines for police departments have received little attention to date. Social media can support police in the successful dissemination of time-critical information and hinder the spread of rumors while aiming to remain as responsive as possible. Police departments, as the main formal authorities for establishing safety and security, take on enormous responsibility in management of crises such as terrorist attacks or shooting rampages. This paper conducts a multi-method case study of a 2016 shooting rampage event in Munich that resulted in the Munich police department receiving high praise. We answer three research questions about how social media, and particularly Twitter, played a crucial role in the crisis’ mitigation. In addition, we show the aftereffects of the crisis on social media use by the police department and depict how public reaction to shared content increased and changed during, and then after, the shooting rampage. We conclude the paper by documenting the implicit social media successful practices deployed by the Munich police during this emergency

THE USE AND EFFECTIVENESS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT SOCIAL MEDIA SITES

There is ample evidence that social media is an effective tool during time of crises, as noted by events such as the Boston Marathon bombing or the Las Vegas mass shooting when police used their social media to communicate directly with the public. However, little research has been conducted on how social media can enhance the toolbox of police agencies to help with non-emergency issues, such as building community relations. Previous research offers a glimpse into ways that police agencies typically use social media. This paper will take a step further to determine if law enforcement is accomplishing its goals with social media. Residents and law enforcement officers were asked to evaluate their department’s social media sites, make assessments on what it appears the agency is attempting to achieve, and evaluate whether the site accomplishes that goal. Further, both audiences made suggestions on what they believe social media should be used for. This research allows police agencies insight into how to use social media sites to accomplish their goals and offers perspectives on what the law enforcement and non-law enforcement audience wants or expects to see

Police-Community Engagement and the Affordances and Constraints of Social Media

This article provides an analysis of the ‘affordances’ and ‘constraints’ of technology-mediated police-community engagement in the United Kingdom (UK). Whilst there has been optimism that social media may transform police communicative practice and help democratise policing, studies suggest that this potential has yet to be realised. Drawing on in-depth interviews with communications professionals, the article demonstrates that social media may afford constabularies visibility, editability, and association. However, organisational, individual and technological factors influence whether these affordances are achieved. This article adds to the literature by demonstrating how citizen engagement with mediated communication is not inevitable. It is instead a product of what the technology affords, the relationship between the technology and its users, and the context within which it is used