Policing through social networking

Abstract

Researchers are starting to explore predictive models for departmental usage of opportunities to self-represent online. This is the first study to independently address police social networking in the US across a variety of social media platforms. Using the sampling frame of the 558 ‘self-representing’ municipal police department respondents in the 2007 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) data, I collected information concerning whether departments maintained active accounts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in 2014. The LEMAS data provides key independent variables concerning each department’s community-oriented policing commitment and technological sophistication. Ultimately, these organisational features are not predictive of departmental use of any of the three social networking sites.