Working with communities on social media. Varieties in the use of Facebook and Twitter by local police
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-01-2016-0002 |
| Published date | 09 October 2017 |
| Date | 09 October 2017 |
| Pages | 782-796 |
| Author | Mengyan Dai,Wu He,Xin Tian,Ashley Giraldi,Feng Gu |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
Working with communities on
social media
Varieties in the use of Facebook and Twitter
by local police
Mengyan Dai
Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Old Dominion University,
Norfolk, Virginia, USA
Wu He and Xin Tian
College of Business and Public Administration, Old Dominion University,
Norfolk, Virginia, USA
Ashley Giraldi
Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Old Dominion University,
Norfolk, Virginia, USA, and
Feng Gu
Department of Computer Science, College of Staten Island, Staten Island,
New York, USA
Abstract
Purpose –American police departments are beginning to implement social media as a strategy to engage the
surrounding communities through various methods, including Facebook and Twitter. The purpose of this
paper is to examine the varieties in the use of Facebook and Twitter by local police departments.
Design/methodology/approach –Thisstudy collected all data betweenOctober 1, 2013 and March31, 2014
from Facebookand Twitter accounts of seven city police departmentsin the Hampton Roads area of Virginia.
These agencies resemble many police departments in the USA, and in total serve a diverse population of
approximately 1,435,000. Content analysis and statistical tests are conducted.
Findings –Results show that specific types of posts are more engaging for the community. Facebook and
Twitter interactions vary depending upon the type of posts, demonstrating that citizens are using Facebook
and Twitter to interact in different ways.
Research limitations/implications –The findings presented here give police agencies’insight on how to
appropriately adjust their use of social media to fulfill the needs of the citizens and optimize interactions with
the community.
Originality/value –This is the first study to systematically examine and analyze the varieties in the use of
social media by traditional American local police departments and their interactions with citizens.
Keywords Facebook, Policing, Twitter, Social media, Citizen interactions
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
As the world is moving into a more internet-based environment where people are
becoming more connected, local law enforcement agencies’use of social media is also
rapidly increasing. Common types of social media include collaborative projects
(e.g. Wikipedia), blogs and microblogs (e.g. Twitter), content communities (e.g. YouTube),
social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), virtual game worlds, and virtual social worlds
(Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). These social media applications both provide platforms for
people to interact with others and, at the same time, contain an enormous amount of
information about people’s social life and activities. Thus, social media has quickly
become a powerful tool for law enforcement agencies to interact with communities and
collect information for criminal investigations. In some agencies, social media is swiftly
Online Information Review
Vol. 41 No. 6, 2017
pp. 782-796
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-01-2016-0002
Received 5 January 2016
Revised 22 April 2017
Accepted 28 April 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
782
OIR
41,6
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