Use of Social Media for Policing

Abstract

An overwhelming amount of information (and misinformation) is available on today's social media sites (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube). Law enforcement agencies actively seek to leverage these resources to improve services and communication with public. Various factors have forced law enforcement agencies to have an active voice on social media. This chapter examines the growing interest of police forces in the use of social media to engage groups previously uninvolved in discussion of community policing and for deliberation about priorities of police forces. The chapter concludes that police forces, in general, have been able to exploit the networked characteristics of social media and the potential of user-generated content. Recommendations are provided to achieve more ambitious aims for using social media for policing.