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Social media and the police: tweeting practices of british police forces during the August 2011 riots

Authors:

Sebastian Denef,

Petra S. Bayerl,

Nico A. KapteinAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '13: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 3471 - 3480

https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466477

Published: 27 April 2013 Publication History

Abstract

With this paper we take a first step to understand the appropriation of social media by the police. For this purpose we analyzed the Twitter communication by the London Metropolitan Police (MET) and the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) during the riots in August 2011. The systematic comparison of tweets demonstrates that the two forces developed very different practices for using Twitter. While MET followed an instrumental approach in their communication, in which the police aimed to remain in a controlled position and keep a distance to the general public, GMP developed an expressive approach, in which the police actively decreased the distance to the citizens. In workshops and interviews, we asked the police officers about their perspectives, which confirmed the identified practices. Our study discusses benefits and risks of the two approaches and the potential impact of social media on the evolution of the role of police in society.

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Cited By

Wani A(2024)Use of ICTs during ongoing protracted socio-political disruptionsExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3638194(1-6)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3638194
Tang GLeung D(2024)Normalisation of crisis communication in post-crisis times: examining the Facebook page of Hong Kong police force during and after radical protestsPolicing and Society10.1080/10439463.2024.2363922(1-17)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2024.2363922
Boersma KClark NRizza C(2024)Governing the uses of social media and crowdsourcing in crisis and disaster (risk) managementRisk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy10.1002/rhc3.1231015:2(94-103)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1002/rhc3.12310
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Social media and the police: tweeting practices of british police forces during the August 2011 riots
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '13: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2013

3550 pages

ISBN:9781450318990

DOI:10.1145/2470654

General Chair:
Wendy E. Mackay
INRIA
,
Program Chairs:
Stephen Brewster
Glasgow University
,
Susanne Bødker
University of Aarhus

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 April 2013

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CHI '13: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 27 - May 2, 2013

Paris, France

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CHI '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 392 of 1,963 submissions, 20%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

Wani A(2024)Use of ICTs during ongoing protracted socio-political disruptionsExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3638194(1-6)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3638194
Tang GLeung D(2024)Normalisation of crisis communication in post-crisis times: examining the Facebook page of Hong Kong police force during and after radical protestsPolicing and Society10.1080/10439463.2024.2363922(1-17)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2024.2363922
Boersma KClark NRizza C(2024)Governing the uses of social media and crowdsourcing in crisis and disaster (risk) managementRisk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy10.1002/rhc3.1231015:2(94-103)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1002/rhc3.12310
Williams TRobinson C(2023)Building an Effective Crisis Communication Plan for Police AgenciesBuilding Trust, Effective Communication, and Transparency Between Police and Community Members10.4018/978-1-6684-8569-9.ch001(1-13)Online publication date: 29-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-8569-9.ch001
Steele JBlau N(2023) An Analysis of Police Department Crisis Communication via Social Media Police Quarterly10.1177/1098611122115050526:4(520-544)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/10986111221150505
Kane E(2023)The potential of automated classification to categorise police force tweeting behaviours: leading the way to large scale analysisPolicing and Society10.1080/10439463.2023.226092834:3(139-165)Online publication date: 28-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2023.2260928
Zheng Q(2023)Restoring trust through transparency: Examining the effects of transparency strategies on police crisis communication in Mainland ChinaPublic Relations Review10.1016/j.pubrev.2023.10229649:2(102296)Online publication date: Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2023.102296
Andrade JFerreira N(2022)Communication Crisis Management of the Public Security PolicyResearch Anthology on Managing Crisis and Risk Communications10.4018/978-1-6684-7145-6.ch009(145-166)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-7145-6.ch009
Dash PNeustaedter CJones BYip C(2022)The Design and Evaluation of Emergency Call Taking User Interfaces for Next Generation 9-1-1Frontiers in Human Dynamics10.3389/fhumd.2022.6706474Online publication date: 16-Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2022.670647
Dong BWu X(2022)Reaching and engaging people: Analyzing tweeting practices of large U.S. police departments pre- and post- the killing of George FloydPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.026928817:7(e0269288)Online publication date: 14-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269288
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