Do organizational differences matter for the use of social media by public organizations? A computational analysis of the way the German police use Twitter for external communication
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Author | Marc Jungblut,Jens Jungblut |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12747 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Do organizational differences matter for the
use of social media by public organizations?
A computational analysis of the way the
German police use Twitter for external
communication
Marc Jungblut
1
| Jens Jungblut
2
1
Department of Media and Communication,
Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich,
Germany
2
Department of Political Science, University
of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Correspondence
Marc Jungblut, Oettingenstrasse 67, 80538
Munich, Germany.
Email: marc.jungblut@ifkw.lmu.de
Abstract
Using a neo-institutional framework, this study
investigates how German police use Twitter for their
communication. This is relevant, because the police
increasingly use social media to bypass the media's gate-
keeping function and attain increased agency in commu-
nication activities. However, little is known about their
different communication strategies and their impact on
user engagement. The analysis is based on an automated
content analysis of all tweets (N=137,771) sent out by
the German police in 2019. It identifies different patterns
regarding the usage of Twitter between police entities on
different levels of governance and in differing types of
environments and examines how these patterns translate
into different levels of user engagement. We find that
German police entities differ in their use of Twitter and
that environmental and organizational aspects can explain
these differences. Moreover, different patterns of social
media usage also lead to differing levels of user
engagement.
Received: 25 June 2020 Revised: 23 April 2021 Accepted: 28 April 2021
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12747
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use,
distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
© 2021 The Authors. Public Administration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Public Admin. 2022;100:821–840. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm 821
1|INTRODUCTION
Public organizations increasingly use social media in general and Twitter in particular for their communication
(Mergel & Bretschneider, 2013). For the police, this is especially visible during situations of ongoing threats, such as
shootings (Akkaya et al., 2019; Fowler, 2017). However, the police also increasingly use Twitter to communicate
about their daily work.
While Twitter has become more common in day-to-day police work, there are still gaps in our knowledge of
how the police use Twitter (Walsh & O'Connor, 2019; Williams et al., 2018). Especially the German police seem to
be somewhat understudied, and our analysis aims to provide a first comprehensive exploratory insight into this mat-
ter (Bayerl & Rüdiger, 2017; Houy et al., 2019).
The introduction of social media can have a significant effect on communication of public organizations
(Mergel & Bretschneider, 2013). Social media enables organizations to build new communicative networks with their
publics as well as interact with citizens in a faster and more dialogical manner (Meijer & Torenvlied, 2016; van Dijck &
Poell, 2013). This can generate more openness of public services for citizens, create new opportunities for citizen
participation, enable citizens to collaborate with public organizations, and increase trust of citizens. Especially micro-
blogging services such as Twitter are increasingly seen as valuable for communication (Etter, 2014; Meijer &
Torenvlied, 2016). However, in how far public organizations make use of these new possibilities regarding more
interactive communication is a separate question.
The police are a special and interesting case for studying how public organizations approach social media,
because they are a bureaucratic organization with strong hierarc hies, a high degree of formality, and strong legal
regulations on their behavior (Dekker et al., 2020;Meijer&Torenvlied,2016). At the same time, they have a
special role in society as they are the only organization that can enforce law and order in the population and use
coercive measures for this (Denef et al., 2013). Thus, they rely on institutional legitimacy and the public's sup-
port, because they need their collaboration in fulfilling their tasks while they are simultaneously increasingly
under public scrutiny regarding how they approach their societal functions (Meijer & Thaens, 2013;Walsh&
O'Connor, 2019).
Existing research on the police's use of Twitter is still somewhat limited. Studies point to a high level of interest
on the side of the police in engaging with social media, as well as a matching demand from the public. A reason for
this might be that social media allows for dialogue which might strengthen the relation between the police and the
public and thereby help the police to fulfill their societal function (Meijer, 2014; Meijer & Torenvlied, 2016; Williams
et al., 2018). However, while Twitter is able to foster dialogue between the police and citizens, studies indicate that
it is so far mainly used as a unidirectional tool to spread information (Crump, 2011; Hu et al., 2018; Meijer &
Thaens, 2013; Meijer & Torenvlied, 2016).
In this, Germany is an especially interesting case as the German police is described as a late-comer to social
media (Bayerl & Rüdiger, 2017). Moreover, their top-down strategy focusing on departmental Twitter accounts as
well as their stronger hierarchical and legal limitations make them particularly challenged in their use of social media
(Bayerl & Rüdiger, 2017; Ingold, 2017). Finally, studies have not presented a comprehensive overview over Twitter
activities of the German police, but rather focused on the historical development, legal background, specific inci-
dents, or organizational rationales (Akkaya et al., 2019; Bayerl & Rüdiger, 2017; Houy et al., 2019; Ingold, 2017).
This study addresses this gap and presents an exploratory but comprehensive overview of the Twitter activities
of the German police for the entire year 2019. We use an automated content analysis of all tweets (N=137,771)
sent out in 2019 by 155 Twitter accounts—representing all active Twitter accounts of German police entities—to
investigate how they use Twitter and in how far there are differences between police entities. In doing so, we focus
on preexisting organizational differences between police departments and their organizational environment, namely
their position in the organizational hierarchy, the population of the policed area, and the level of urbanization. More-
over, the study examines whether organizational differences and different communication strategieslead to different
levels of user engagement.
822 JUNGBLUT AND JUNGBLUT
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