A driving force, a driven force? Social media and police self-legitimacy
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14613557231173499 |
| Author | David Czudnochowski,Franziska Ludewig |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: Technology in Policing |
A driving force, a driven force? Social
media and police self-legitimacy
David Czudnochowski
University of Freiburg, Germany
Franziska Ludewig
Deutsche Hochschule der Polizei, Germany
Abstract
Social media (SM) have changed the conditions and forms of public communications and have been part of the standard
communication repertoire of police authorities for a while now. Despite their importance, many aspects have been insuf-
ficiently researched, including their role in the self-legitimisation of the police. This article examines the SM strategies of
police press and public relations in the context of an increasingly critical public in Germany. Based on expert interviews
with press officers from German police authorities, it shows how police organisations are evaluating the changing com-
munication landscape and which strategies they are pursuing to appear as legitimate authorities in an increasingly net-
worked world. The focus is on how the police are adapting to the new technologies of SM and using them to
negotiate legitimacy. We show how the police use SM to shape public debate, generate resonance and deal with the per-
ceived loss of their interpretive authority. For this purpose, we question the self-image of the police as given by their
media representatives. We examine it in discursive political struggles over crime and legitimacy. We show that social
technological changes are turning the police into an active, opinion-forming actor who permanently have to negotiate
their authority through visibility.
Keywords
Policing, social media, legitimacy, communication, technological change
Submitted 8 Dec 2022, Revise received 3 Mar 2023, accepted 17 Apr 2023
Introduction
Critical evaluation of the police and their performance has
always been part of public discourse. Policing today is
increasingly evaluated and negotiated in social media
(SM), especially by different sub-publics (van Dijck
et al., 2018). With SM, former hardly visible stakeholders
or non-governmental organisations can influence the
public discourse about the police, in mobilising their
content-related community. Police legitimacy involves the
interplay between police practice and public perception
through information and communication technologies.
That interaction is shaped by contingent social attributions.
Videos of police misconduct shared on SM can generate
new counter-narratives that fundamentally critique the
police and can question the police’s very raison d’être
(McDowell and Fernandez, 2018).
In Germany, there have been far-reaching incidents and
debates on the legitimacy of the police, especially racialised
crime debates. Police forces have been publicly accused of
concealing the ethnic background of potential suspects for
Corresponding author:
David Czudnochowski, Centre for Security and Society, University of
Freiburg, Werthmannstr. 15, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany.
Email: david.czudnochowski@css.uni-freiburg.de
Special Issue: Technology in Policing
International Journal of
Police Science & Management
2023, Vol. 25(3) 226–236
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/14613557231173499
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