police foundation social media briefing...current police use of social media uk police forces began...

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briefingThe

Series 3, Edition 1 – June 2014

Social media – a growing form of internet-basedcommunication interfaces with all areas ofpolicing. It offers the police a way of connectingand engaging with the public, it enablesimportant information to be distributed quicklyand easily, and it can assist in intelligencegathering. With its growing impact and reach,social media presents real opportunities butalso poses challenges and is increasingly seenas a game changer for the police.

This Briefing discusses the ways in whichsocial media can help the police, provides

examples of where it has been used to positiveeffect, and looks at the challenges of employingthis new technology. It focuses on the policeservice’s use of social media rather than thepolicing of social media or the use of socialmedia by Police and Crime Commissioners.

What is social media?Social media is a method of communicatingusing websites that allow people to ‘post’public information, chat with others, sendmessages, and share photographs or videos.

Introduction

The briefing – Police use of social media

Police use of social media

© incamerastock/Alamy © iStock.com/ngkaki © Chris Howes/Wild Places Photography/Alamy

This Police Foundation Briefing looks at the current use of social media by the policeand examines some of the key issues.

The tool is used by organisations andindividuals keen to establish a connection withmillions of other users. Unlike traditionalunilateral communications channels, such astelevision advertising, social media provides anopportunity to establish a two-way dialoguewith audiences, actively engaging people inconversations rather than simply providingthem with information.

There are many different forms of social media,including social networks such as Facebookand LinkedIn, where users have public profilesand network or connect with other users; microblogging sites such as Twitter, which enable thepublic sharing of short updates; and photo orvideo sharing sites, such as Instagram orYouTube, which enable the public disseminationof photos and videos (Association of Police andCrime Commissioners, 2012). This Briefingfocuses primarily on Facebook and Twitter, asthese are the most relevant to policing, althoughmany of the issues raised here also relate toother forms of social media.

Any person or organisation can set up a ‘page’on Facebook or a ‘profile’ on Twitter in order topost information. Facebook users choose whomto ‘friend’ and Twitter users whom to ‘follow’and in this way can keep up to date with newsfrom these individuals or organisations.Establishing a relationship on social media isimportant as users must friend or follow a profilein order to see updates or messages. Widerexposure and additional friends and followersare potentially gained by people passing on(‘re-tweeting’) or ‘favouriting’ updates (‘tweets’)on Twitter or clicking the ‘like’ button belowposts on Facebook, which allow a wideraudience to view the original post.

Why should the policeuse social media?Social media represents a major shift in theway the public are sharing and using

information. According to research by Ofcom(2014), 83 per cent of adults now go online and55 per cent of the adult population has acurrent social networking site profile. 96 percent of adults who use social media have aprofile on Facebook, while three in ten have aprofile on Twitter. 60 per cent of social mediausers, and 83 per cent of those aged 16-24,visit social media sites more than once a day.

Social media therefore provides the police witha new way to connect with the public. In aconsent-based policing system engagement iscrucial in building public trust and confidence;social media enables the police to engagebetter and to build relationships, as well as togather information and intelligence. To takeadvantage of this opportunity, it is becomingincreasingly important for the police tounderstand and make use of the differenttools available.

“An online presence in a modern worldis as important as traditional policingmethods such as walking the beat”Nick Keane, Digital EngagementAdviser, College of Policing (2014a)

Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO)guidelines on the safe use of social mediarecognise that social networking sites assistthe police in engagement, allow officers torespond in real time to incidents, and help thepolice to demonstrate greater accountabilityand transparency (ACPO, 2013). In particular,social media may enable the police to engagewith ‘hard to reach’ groups, reaching adifferent demographic from those whotraditionally attend public meetings.Younger people, for example, haveexpressed an interest in contacting thepolice online (London Assembly, 2013).It may also be a positive way of connectingwith members of the community who mightotherwise be uninterested or antagonistic(Knibbs, 2013).

The briefing – Police use of social media2

“I go to public meetings and have thesame usual suspects, which is great butsocial media is a chance for me toengage with potentially younger peoplewho don’t normally come to residentmeetings” Chief Inspector Blakeman,West Midlands (Sommers, 2013)

Social media sites, unlike traditional forms ofengagement, provide a means for the public toraise concerns while remaining anonymous.Many users have ‘handles’ – names which arenot their own – and this layer of protectionenables them to contact the police withoutrevealing their identity. A survey by Accenture(2012) found that 69 per cent of respondentswould interact with the police more if theycould remain anonymous, so in this respectsocial media may provide an opportunity for thepolice to receive information from people whowould not otherwise have contacted them.

Current police useof social mediaUK police forces began experimenting withsocial media in 2008. Its use was often initiatedby individual officers, with varying degrees ofofficial support (Crump, 2011). Since then thepolice service’s use of social media, includingTwitter and Facebook, has grown substantially.All police forces in England and Wales, includingthe British Transport Police, now have Twitteraccounts and all but two are on Facebook,while more than 2,050 officers currently haveindividual Twitter accounts. Police force pagesin the UK have a total of 1,567,759 followers onTwitter and 825,243 ‘likes’ on Facebook.1

Greater Manchester Police now has 72,409‘likes’ on Facebook, the most for a police forcein England and Wales, while the MetropolitanPolice Service has 195,487 followers on Twitter.2

Joint guidance issued by the National PolicingImprovement Agency (NPIA) and ACPO setsout how police forces can optimise their use ofsocial media (NPIA and ACPO, 2010) andfurther guidance has been issued by ACPO andthe College of Policing on the safe use of socialmedia and on the principles of onlineengagement and how to manage onlinecommunities.3 But despite the widespreadadoption of social media by the police inEngland and Wales, there is as yet no nationalstrategy that sets out how the service shoulduse social media (Sommers, 2013). As aconsequence, each force uses its owndiscretion, so both content and capability varysignificantly between forces.

The police service’s use of social media can bebroadly divided into three related areas:

1. Providing information – enablingspecifically-targeted information to beshared quickly, easily and cheaply.

2. Engagement – providing the police with away of connecting and buildingrelationships with local communities andmembers of the public.

3. Intelligence and investigation – allowingthe police to listen to what theircommunities are saying and to buildevidence for investigations by monitoringsocial media content.

Providing informationSocial media gives the police a new way ofsharing information with the public, beyondconventional mechanisms such as distributingleaflets or through the traditional news media.Posts can provide safety advice to the public,encourage people to be alert to criminal activityin their area, and counsel them on how tominimise risk. The information can be published

3The briefing – Police use of social media

1 These may not be discrete users, however. One person mayfollow more than one police force on Twitter, for example.

2 Figures correct as of 5 May 2014.3 See: http://www.app.college.police.uk/app-content/engagement-and-communication/communications.

in real time and directly communicated to aready audience in those who have signed up toreceive news from the account. This audiencecan read the information instantly and share it atthe click of a button, disseminating the materialto a large number of people at little cost.

Social media is particularly useful during criticalincidents, such as disorder, demonstrations andprotests. One notable example of this was thesummer riots of 2011, when police forces andneighbourhood officers used the tool to calmthe public and refute ill-founded rumours ofdisorderly incidents (Crump, 2011). A goodexample of this is when Mark Payne, aSuperintendent in West Midlands Police, usedTwitter to reassure citizens that there was noriot activity taking place in his area (see Figure1). When used in this way social media cancontrol the spread of rumours andmisinformation during protests and large scaleincidents of disorder. Indeed this approach wasrecommended by the Home Affairs SelectCommittee in their report following the August2011 riots (House of Commons Home AffairsSelect Committee, 2011).

Internationally, there are a number of examplesof the police utilising social media effectivelyduring large scale disturbances. For example theVancouver Police Department (VPD) used Twitterextensively when disorder broke out during amajor sporting event in 2011. The social mediaofficer for the VPD used HootSuite (the socialmedia management dashboard) to monitorpublic sentiment from the moment trouble brokeout. The police team used Twitter to continuallyengage with the crowd, as a result of which theforce’s Facebook ‘likes’ grew by 2,000 per cent.

Social media use can also extend beyondtraditional policing areas to broader disastermanagement and was employed in 2011during the New Zealand earthquake and theflooding in Queensland, Australia, where itbecame the primary means of communication(Knibbs, 2013). More recently, the police inCalgary in Canada gained an internationalaward for their innovative use of social mediaduring severe weather. After the event, thepublic expressed their gratitude to all theemergency response teams via Twitter, whichhelped to boost police morale (Elliott, 2013).


Figure 1

(Payne, 2011)

Arguably the most high profile example of thepolice using Twitter during a major incidentoccurred following the Boston marathonbombings in 2013. At every stage of the searchfor the suspect, the police kept the publicinformed using social media. The first officialannouncement that the suspect had beenapprehended came from a Tweet (Figure 2)(Keller, 2013). In their review of how theMetropolitan Police Service (MPS) can makebetter use of technology, the Budget andPerformance Committee of the LondonAssembly noted that the key to the success inBoston was that the police already hadprotocols in place on how to use social mediain this situation (London Assembly, 2013).

EngagementThe use of social media can go beyond theone-way provision of information to enabletwo-way engagement with the public.Engagement is a fundamental part of policingand social media allows the police to connectwith citizens; giving the public an opportunity tocommunicate with the police and feel that theyare accessible as an organisation. Social media

sites provide an opportunity for officers to showthe ‘human’ side of policing and discuss theday-to-day incidents that make up an averageday at work (Webster, 2013), as well as to buildrelationships with communities. Postinginteractive content such as polls and videossparks dialogue, while innovative use of socialmedia broadens the conversation on policing.

One of the most notable early uses of socialmedia by the police was Greater ManchesterPolice’s ‘Twitter Day’, held during 2010, duringwhich every incident notified to their controlroom over a 24-hour period was posted onTwitter. The idea behind it, according to theirChief Constable, was to “raise awareness ofthe diverse and complex role of policing,explaining how much time officers spend withnon-crime matter” (Fisher, 2012). The resultswere eye-opening and the force was able todemonstrate to a wide audience that much ofthe contact they received concerned very minorincidents or events which were not strictlypolice-related, such as a report of cows atloose and a phone call from a man reportingthat his television was not working. As a resultof the experiment, Greater Manchester Police


Figure 2

increased their number of Twitter followers from3,000 to 17,0004 (Crump, 2011).

In addition to official force tweets, manyofficers tweet individually, primarily as a form ofpublic engagement. For example, Sergeant EdRogerson uses Twitter to discuss his life as acommunity officer in Harrogate, NorthYorkshire. He uses Twitter to increase hisvisibility, having been inspired to do so afterbeing repeatedly told by members of the publicwhen he was a PC that he was the first officerthey had seen in months (Laville, 2012).

Social media is also useful for internalpurposes: to engage police staff members orboost morale. Following the summer riots in2011, Staffordshire police posted a ‘wordcloud’ which collated the words mostfrequently posted by Staffordshire policefollowers. The word cloud celebrated thepositive feedback the force had received for theway it dealt with the disorder.

Intelligence and investigationSocial media can assist the police inintelligence-gathering, with its speed providinga crucial advantage when appealing forwitnesses or information or looking for missingpersons. It can be used during ongoingincidents; for example in the case of JoannaYeates, who went missing in December 2010,Avon and Somerset Police used Facebook tocall for anyone with information to comeforward. Footage from CCTV cameras was alsoposted on YouTube.

It can also be used to obtain information afterthe event. For example, in order to identifysuspects in the wake of the summer riots thepolice posted CCTV footage and photos ofsuspects on the website Flickr as part ofOperation Withern. The MPS used Twitter topromote this and within hours the Flickr images

had been ‘retweeted’ 8,500 times and viewed4.3 million times (Denef et al, 2013).

In 2012 a post about a missing dogmade by Barnet MPS on Twitter was‘retweeted’ 52,820 times and the dogwas subsequently returned as a result(ITV News, 2012).

In addition, social media can provideintelligence to inform deployment decisions andimprove the effective allocation of resources(HMIC, 2012a). To this end, as well as usingtheir own pages and profiles to gatherinformation, the police follow the use of socialmedia by others, gaining an insight into theirlocal communities, picking up leads andpreparing for potential incidents. Sir Peter Fahy,Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police,stated that social media channels played acrucial role in intelligence gathering aboutcommunity tensions following a fatal policeshooting in Cheshire (Fahy, 2012).

The police also regularly visit and monitor sitesknown for potential criminal or antisocial activityto gather information and sources (COMPOSITEProject, 2012). These include sites on the ‘BlackWeb’ (an unofficial list of sites that criminals useto communicate), sites that propagate hatepropaganda and chat rooms used by sexoffenders to target vulnerable victims (Taylor,2011). Every interaction with the internet leaves atrace and trawling through an individual’s socialmedia profiles can give the police information onhis or her circle of friends or their location at aspecific time. Partnership working can assist inthis area: Facebook, for example, works with thepolice to help identify images of child sex abuse,freezing a user’s data to assist investigation.Police officers from various forces across Europereport that in many cases criminal informationcan be found online that without social mediawould have required a much greater investigativeeffort or would not have been available at all(COMPOSITE Project, 2012).


4 They had 151,236 followers on 5 May 2014, the secondhighest number for a force in England and Wales.

The challengesof social media

Getting the tone rightInformation placed by the police on socialmedia needs to be relevant and useful.Posts which appear to be of limited practicalbenefit can leave the public with theimpression that the police could be spendingtheir time more fruitfully (PSI, 2012). Thetone in which information is presented isalso important, affecting the likelihood that itwill be read and passed on and the way inwhich the sender is viewed.

Research has shown that different forces usesocial media differently (Denef et al., 2013).In an analysis of Twitter communication bythe Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) andGreater Manchester Police (GMP) during thesummer riots, the MPS adopted a moreformal approach, keeping its distance fromthe public, while GMP was more informal,connecting with the public using a more‘expressive’ style of tweet. The MPS, forexample, would post the following: ‘NewCCTV images of people police need toidentify on our Flickr page http://bit.ly/rnax8UPls look and RT’, whereas GMP’s post stated:‘Can you help identify these people? Checkour Flickr gallery of wanted suspects andcall 0800 092 0410 http://bit.ly/oyfZiN’.

The study found benefits and challenges in bothapproaches. GMP’s more informal style createda closer relationship with the public, but as aresult boundaries were more fluid and easier toover-step. This can lead to a negative responsefrom followers. For example GMP tweeted:‘Mum-of-two, not involved in disorder, jailed forFIVE months for accepting shorts looted fromshop. There are no excuses’. This triggeredcritical responses such as: ‘That last @gmpolicetweet: wrong sentence, wrong tone, wrongeverything. Pissing away goodwill collected over

last week’. The research concluded that theMPS’s more formal style reduced the force’sability to connect as effectively with the publicas GMP’s approach, although the Twitter feedwas found to be easier to maintain and lessprone to negative feedback.

“Our data indicates that choosing aninstrumental versus an expressivestrategy may lead to differentrelationships between police and public.Given the dependence of police onpublic cooperation, the choice may wellimpact police performance in the short-and long-term.” (Denef et al, 2013)

Engagement, not just giving informationThe art of effectively using social media isarguably to balance information provision withposts that are entertaining and fun. If followersenjoy reading police updates, and trust thetweets or posts as good sources ofinformation, they will be more inclined toengage and come forward with informationthemselves. In this way information provisionand intelligence-gathering can overlap withengagement, which to be effective, needs to betwo-way. Studies have shown that opencommunication can improve the levels of trustcitizens have in their forces (COMPOSITEProject, 2012; Ruddell and Jones, 2013), whilean online presence which is interactive, ratherthan one which simply provides information,can create a personal connection with usersand promote positive attitudes (Briones et al,2011). A survey by Accenture (2012) found thatover half of UK respondents (58 per cent)would like to see the police using social mediato engage with the community, rather thansimply to provide information. In practicehowever, the police often use social mediaplatforms merely to give or ask for information,rather than to engage in a dialogue with thepublic (Crump, 2011). This pattern appears tobe reflected across Europe, with police mostcommonly using social media for informing the


public about recent crimes, traffic accidents,missing people, stolen vehicles, suspects orarrests made (Denef, et al, 2012).

Engagement through social media is notwithout risks. There is potential for mistakes tobe made if the right information is not given, orinappropriate detail is disclosed. By its naturesocial media is fast moving and difficult tocontrol and any mistakes that occur areimmediately exposed to the wider public. Thusfor example in April 2014, the New York PoliceDepartment asked the public to tweet picturesof themselves with police officers using aspecified hash tag. The response wasdominated by pictures that showed the policein a negative light (Tran, M., 2014).

Publicising a police presenceIf the police are to disseminate informationwidely or engage with citizens effectively online,public awareness around police use of socialmedia needs to be increased. The opt in natureof the tool means that the police have to makesure the public is aware of, and will follow, theirsocial media pages. A large and diverseaudience will enable a police force todisseminate public information and engagemore widely. However a survey by Accenture(2012) found that less than a fifth of UKrespondents were aware that the police arecurrently using digital channels. If members ofthe public are not a ‘friend’ or ‘follower’ of thepolice on Facebook or Twitter, opportunities forsocial media engagement may be lost.

Identifying useful informationSir Denis O’Connor, former HM Chief Inspectorof Constabulary, described social media as a‘game changer’, but said that currently thepolice were ‘not geared’ to make use of thedata it provided (House of Commons HomeAffairs Select Committee, 2011). Due to thevolume of information that is shared throughsocial media, there are significant challenges inprocessing it and there may be a reputational

risk for the police if, due to the volume of datathat is potentially available to them, they missimportant information on social media thatcould help them prevent a crime or apprehenda suspect more quickly.

During the summer riots, the systems fordeveloping intelligence from large flows ofsocial media data were not always sufficient tocope with the demand to process it rapidlyenough to usefully inform strategies and tacticson the ground. Tim Godwin, actingCommissioner of the MPS at that time,subsequently stated that many UK policeforces were still playing ‘catch up’ in their useof social media (Mason, 2012).

Police have to assess the value and accuracyof any intelligence they obtain. The House ofCommons Home Affairs Select Committee(2011) recognised that the task ofdistinguishing credible information from rumourand speculation was challenging due to thevolume of information involved, and the speedof interaction. HMIC has recommended that an‘all source’, public order intelligence hub shouldbe developed to analyse trends in communitytension, including through monitoring socialmedia (HMIC, 2011).

“For information to be considered‘intelligence’ it needs to meet certainthresholds of how it is gathered,evidenced, corroborated, verified,understood and applied. To be able toinform important decisions, eitherstrategic or operational, [social mediaintelligence] must establish its ownapproach to secure these evidentiarythresholds.” (Bartlett et al, 2013)

The police need to develop ways to betteraccess and interpret the information that isavailable through social media. In the US,recent research has shown that using Twitterdata improved crime predication rates of


stalking, criminal damage and gambling by 6.6per cent in Chicago compared to a standardcrime prediction approach (Gerber, M., 2013).In the UK, a range of tools are becomingavailable, such as ‘Redknight’, which was usedduring the 2012 Olympics.5 Similarly, theCollaborative Online Social Media Observatory(COSMOS), developed by researchers at CardiffUniversity, is researching the potential linkbetween social media updates and crime. TheCOSMOS team has partnered with the MPS tosee if they can gauge and perhaps even predictcrime in certain London Boroughs.6 Elsewhere,social network analysis is being explored as atool for supporting the investigation of child sextrafficking in the UK (Cockbain et al, 2011).

Managing police use of social mediaPolice officers and staff of all ranks and levelsof experience are able to use social media,which presents considerable managementchallenges. Content placed on social media bypolice officers and staff must be appropriate forpublic consumption and use the right tone andstyle. Where this is not the case, processesmust be in place to address this.

A 2012 HMIC report identified 357 instances ofpotentially inappropriate behaviour by police onsocial media over a nine month period, 71 percent of which were on Twitter. HMICcategorised this behaviour as:

� offensive language or behaviour (132instances)

� comments on police protocol or procedure(119 instances)

� negativity towards work (70 instances); and

� extreme opinions on the government (36instances)

The report also found that only nine forceshad the capacity to check for inappropriate

behaviour on personal accounts and that nineforces did not monitor staff use of social mediaat all. The report recommended further trainingshould be given to those using social media,identifying six forces who had not carried outany training or awareness raising activity(HMIC, 2012b).

“Police forces and PCCs should ensurethey have appropriate mechanisms formonitoring and managing thereputational risks which theinappropriate use of social mediapresent” (HMIC, 2012a).

Following the controversial suspension andreinstatement of the @mentalhealthcop Twitteraccount of Inspector Michael Brown of WestMidlands Police, it has come to light thatofficers using Twitter on behalf of their forcemust make their usernames and passwordsavailable to their employers should they deemit necessary to remove inappropriate materialor take control of an account. The policeservice’s national lead for digital engagement,Deputy Chief Constable Ian Hopkins, hasstated that police forces must exercise ‘propercontrol’ over what officers publish on theirsocial media accounts (Sommers, 2014) and atleast 10 forces are known to use monitoringsoftware to scrutinise their officers’ use ofTwitter (Iszatt, 2014). The College of Policing’sCode of Ethics clearly states that standardsthat apply to the management of informationoffline are equally applicable to social media(College of Policing, 2014b).

One aspect of social media that is particularlydifficult to manage relates to ‘cross-overaccounts’. These accounts, which areparticularly prevalent on Twitter, see policeofficers posting about work but also about theirpersonal life. A degree of humour, frivolity orhuman detail can help attract followers, who donot always want to read serious, dry tweets.However, occasionally an extreme opinion is


5 See http://www.redknightapps.com.6 See: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/T-Z/dr-matthew-williams-overview.html.

tweeted, or one user engages in aninappropriate debate on Twitter with anotheruser. It is important that forces have effectiveprocesses in place to respond proportionatelywhen these incidents occur.

ResourcesThe growth of social media has come at a timeof austerity, when police budgets are being cut.It may also have raised expectations. If thepublic comes to expect immediate responsesto requests for information or updates on theprogress of investigations, it may be difficult tofind the time and manpower to resource this.

The use of social media in its current guise is,however, not particularly resource intensive; it isbeing absorbed into the duties of servingofficers and communications departments asan addition to their workload. But to use itoperationally, beyond it being an informationtool, is likely to require significant investment.As Peter Fahy suggests, “it can be a reallyuseful tool, but you need to put a lot ofresources into your control room” (Fahy, 2012).

Deploying sufficient personnel is one suchinvestment. The police need to be able toanalyse and manage the information theyreceive quickly and effectively. This is ofparticular importance in relation to criticalincidents, when there is a need to analyseinformation at speed. But it takes time tomanage information effectively. Setting upsystems to mine and scrape social media forintelligence purposes might assist the police inmonitoring community tension levels andanticipating behaviour, but it only comes atconsiderable additional expense.

The extent to which these resources aremade available may depend on whether thereis sufficient understanding of the value ofsocial networking at a strategic level. Somesenior officers are familiar with the use ofTwitter and Facebook for operational policing,others less so.

ConclusionSocial media provides the police with newopportunities to engage with the public; tocollect and impart information; and to gatherintelligence. However, these opportunitiescome with challenges which are yet to befully addressed.

Currently, there is no national strategy onpolice use of social media and every force isleft to develop its own approach. In March2013 Deputy Chief Constable Gordon Scobbiecalled for the College of Policing and ACPO toproduce joined-up policy to embed the use ofsocial media into policing (Sommers, 2013).However there are some potential changes inthe pipeline: a Digita l CommunicationsSteering Group has been set up by the MPS tofocus on key strategic social media issues –ranging from identifying the correct technologyto deciding appropriate standards of usage –and the resultant report may help to clarifyissues in this area.

Work remains to be done on developingsystems and strategies that help embed the useof social media into everyday working practices,and ensure that lessons are learnt in terms ofwhat constitutes best practice. Research intothe public perception of the police’s use ofsocial media may be of benefit, particularly if ithelped to pin down what the public wants froma police social media account, how they viewdifferent types of tweets or posts and whatimpact social media has on public confidence inthe longer-term. With 87 per cent of youngpeople using social media, it represents acrucial form of communication now and in thefuture and could become a vital element inhelping to build trust and confidence andimprove policing in years to come.


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The Police Foundation is the onlyindependent charity that acts as abridge between the public, the policeand the Government, while beingowned by none of them. The Police FoundationPark Place, 12 Lawn LaneLondon SW8 1UD Tel: 020 7582 3744Email: [email protected] www.police-foundation.org.uk Charity Registration Number: 278257

© 2014: The Police Foundation

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