Policing through social media: a qualitative exploration

Abstract

Social media, in the past decade, has been used to hold police accountable for their actions. There has been, however, a paucity of empirical research into how law enforcement uses social media. To explore this issue, this paper uses qualitative data emerging from ethnographic research conducted in a Southern American state. Participant observations of police officer deployments were paired with semi-structured interviews with officers from three law enforcement agencies. The extent and ways in which these officers used social media is explored. Findings indicate that social media is used to bring positive attention to law enforcement agencies and aid criminal investigations. Although the positive impact of social media was highlighted in these experiences, persistent problems and challenges also featured in the data. Finally, officer insights were drawn upon to make recommendations for future policing policy and research.

Keywords

Social media criminal investigations public relations legitimacy Ferguson effect

Introduction

The phrase “social media” is used to describe a group of computer-mediated and open-sourced networking platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube. Consumers of these platforms often reference them daily and most use them multiple times a day (Pew Research Center, 2018). As a result, the general public tends to receive most of their insights into current affairs from social media. Moreover, citizen knowledge of the justice system and crime is often shaped by social media consumption (Intravia et al., 2018). Consequently, the virtual areas inhabited by these platforms have come to be regarded as a “significant public space” (Omand et al., 2012: 803). As guardians of public safety, therefore, social media presents a new frontier for law enforcement.¹

Unfortunately, highly reported use-of-force incidents have weakened law enforcement legitimacy and resulted in a decline in public cooperation with the police. Likewise, these events have led to a new form of public protest and digital activism (Intravia et al., 2018). Nowhere is this more apparent than on social media pages calling for the condemnation of law enforcement officers. Although much has been said in the news and social media about these efforts, little is known about how law enforcement perceive or use social media for their purposes. The paucity of empirical research in this area is surprising, given how social media has permeated nearly all aspects of contemporary society.

To address this gap in the extant literature, we draw upon an ethnographic approach and report insights from officers in three law enforcement agencies in a Southern American state. In doing so, we use field observations and semi-structured interviews with law enforcement on the extent to and ways in which they use social media. Prior to getting into the data, however, we first situate this study within the empirical literature on law enforcement legitimacy, social media, and policing. Second, we describe the methodology employed in this study and then thematically present the researcher’s field notes and officer insights from the interview data. Fourth and finally, we discuss the implications from these findings, in terms of the changing approaches to policing and make recommendations for police practice and research.

Law enforcement legitimacy and social media

In the spring of 2014, Michael Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson (MO) police officer Darren Wilson. Outrage over yet another unarmed, young, black, male dying at the hands of law enforcement prompted peaceful and violent protests in Ferguson. Pubic protesters were mobilized in social media events and documented their confrontations with a highly militarized police force (Auston, 2017; Bonailla and Rosa, 2015). Relating to the former, the multivocal nature of Twitter allowed the public to simultaneously, “read what protestors were tweeting, what journalists were reporting, what the police was announcing and how observers and analysts interpreted the unfolding events” (Bonilla and Rosa, 2015: 7). Bonilla and Rosa (2015), in their hashtag ethnography, found that protests on-the-ground in Ferguson were strengthened through social media, which contributed to public campaigns for justice and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement (Auston, 2017). To that end, Maguire et al. (2017), in their pre-/post-Ferguson analysis of officers killed in the line of duty, reported that Michael Brown’s death launched “a new civil rights movement” aimed at issues of race and police brutality (Maguire et al., 2017: 740; see also Fox and Holt, 2018).

Moreover, subsequent police use-of-force incidents were viewed with a more critical eye. Social media, in particular, has been used as a form of police surveillance (or “watching from below”) and has been performed by self-described “police accountability” activists (Owen, 2017: 688). “Cop watching,” as it is also known, followed incidents like Ferguson and typically includes the “incidental, happenstance documentation” of police activities by local citizens (Brucato, 2015: 48). Brucato (2015), in his analysis of police accountability activists, believes that cop watchers see themselves as producing a “new popular power” of citizen journalism (p. 49; see also Bonilla and Rosa, 2015).

With more than half of the American population carrying a video-enabled smartphone, unflattering images of police–public contacts have come to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness, and the growing spotlight on policing has called into question law enforcement integrity (Bonilla and Rosa, 2015). Although these events can trend on social media and become viral phenomena, they often represent sensationalized aspects of police work as most officers go their entire career without using their service weapon in the line of duty (Walker and Katz, 2013). Mischaracterizations of police work on social media, nonetheless, impact the public’s assessment of law enforcement legitimacy. To that end, Todak (2017) suggested that law enforcement are facing a “legitimacy crisis” (p. 250).

In the face of anti-police sentiment, Tyler (1988), in his seminal work Why People Obey the Law, argued that public trust in law enforcement is best sustained by decision-making and police practices that are fair, respectful, and just. The philosophy of procedural justice, as it is more commonly known, has garnered a lot of empirical attention in recent decades. Generally speaking, procedural justice has been found to instill public trust and confidence in the police (Myhill and Bradford, 2012), an obligation to follow the law and orders from law enforcement (Tyler and Fagan, 2008), and a sense of community between the police and public (Kochel, 2012). Procedural justice has also been found to have benefits for law enforcement. Donner et al. (2015), in their review of the procedural justice extant literature, found it to be positively related to organizational commitment and job satisfaction, while negatively associated with police misconduct.

Unfortunately, and in spite of these findings, the response from law enforcement has not been in kind. Many officers, for example, fear becoming the next star of a career-ending viral video, which has resulted in a reduced willingness to be proactive in their face-to-face engagements with the public. This depolicing phenomenon, brought on by additional social media scrutiny of police work, has led some to claim the existence of a “Ferguson effect” on policing. Here, it is suggested that crime has increased due to law enforcement’s withdrawal from potentially contentious situations (Pyrooz et al., 2016). Although the evidence of this is mixed in the extant literature (see Maguire et al., 2017 for contrary results), officers are certainly feeling the pressure (Deuchar et al., 2018).

Police use of social media

Despite the alleged disengagement of law enforcement from contentious encounters with residents, police agencies appear to be increasingly engaged in their use of social media (Thorburn, 2014). In fact, in 2015, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) reported that 94% of American law enforcement agencies had implemented some sort of Facebook-related strategy. Social media strategies, according to Meijer and Thaens (2013) in their analysis of three law enforcement agencies in North America, include “push”, “pull”, and “networking”. “Push” strategies are used to broadcast information to citizens, whereas “pull” strategies seek to attract users to information. Once a user is engaged, “networking” strategies seek to provide interactive engagements between the agency and public. Push, pull, and networking strategies are used primarily to craft a public image and aid criminal investigations (Meijer and Thaens, 2013; see also Heverin and Zach, 2010; Hu et al., 2018).

Relating to the former, police are viewed as a somewhat monolithic group. Agencies have, therefore, experienced local consequences for the use-of-force public relations blunders of far away agencies. To strengthen the image of police, more contemporary agencies are bypassing scorned, yet established media outlets and using social media to self-promote their good deeds. In an analysis of 4915 Facebook posts by American law enforcement agencies, for example, Herevin and Zach (2010) found that most law enforcement social media engagements seek to share information with the public. In fact, Lieberman et al. (2013), in their study of the 23 largest police departments’ Facebook pages, found 31% of the information shared to be public interest stories. These stories, according to Hu et al.’s (2018) analysis of large American police departments Facebook postings, tend to prompt an image of police as crime fighters. This, according to Reiner’s (2003) discursive framework for understanding policing and the media, “involves the continuous reconstruction and reinterpretation of the nature of policing as matters of social order, conflict, and authority change” (p. 106). To facilitate this undertaking, Lee and McGovern (2013) noted the development of public relations units in policing organizations. The hope from these endeavors is that law enforcement agencies are able to regain public trust and build better long-lasting relations with the public (Williams et al., 2013).

Despite this objective, most research finds these efforts to be largely symbolic. Williams et al. (2013), for example, reported that two-way communication between the police and public was rare on social media platforms, in their analysis of the 2011 riots in England that followed the death of Mark Duggan. In fact, Lieberman et al. (2013) found that law enforcement were most likely to receive interactions from the public on social media pages when agencies directly interacted with a specific user, and among stories involving officers hurt or killed in the line of duty. Substantively, law enforcements public imaging efforts can be seen a presentation strategy to the public to overcome negative publicity.

In addition to crafting a public image, several incidental and retrospective case studies suggest that law enforcement use social media to facilitate criminal investigations. In doing so, detectives often take advantage of social media users’ narcissism, as even those with something criminal to hide often share their lives with other platform users (Trottier, 2011). For that reason, Thorburn (2014), in his analysis of the 2012 Quebec student strike for reasonable college tuition, reported that preliminary investigations often begin on social media pages because they contain information otherwise unavailable to police, they are cheap, and are low-risk to law enforcement and civilian safety due to a detective’s ability to remain anonymous while sleuthing for evidence. As an investigative tool, Williams et al. (2013) found that detectives use social media platforms to identify people, discover criminal activity, and gather evidence. This is accomplished, according to Trottier (2011), through undercover approaches and utilization of criminal informants/snitches that have direct access to criminal peers. In this context, Marwich (2012), in his ethnography of American social media use, found that law enforcement are increasingly drawing upon social media’s potential for “social surveillance”, particularly relating to information about real or potential criminal activity (p. 279). Although social media platforms present an opportunity for law enforcement intelligence gathering, most social science research questions the abilities of law enforcement to use it in real time (Omand et al., 2012). Police can be said, nevertheless, to be monitoring social media platforms (Owen, 2017).

Despite the growth of technology and increasing use of social media, there is still much to learn regarding how law enforcement use these tools. Although the prior literature highlights some opportunities and challenges for law enforcement, research overwhelmingly portrays how law enforcement outwardly represent police work through social media postings on a limited number of platforms (i.e., Facebook and Twitter). Similarly, research exploring more clandestine operations has primarily been incidental and retrospective. Although case studies are important, they often represent non-systemic and anecdotal information. Moreover, missing from this body of literature are the voices of law enforcement and a behind-the-scenes look at how police use social media. This is all the more critical, due to growing public outrage for police questionable police conduct in the post-Ferguson era. Measured against this complex backdrop of a legitimacy crisis in a post-modern era of oppositional social and political movements, and a renewed emphasis on public accountability (Bonilla and Rosa, 2015), the stakes for these analyses could not be higher.

Methods

In this study, we focused on exploring the extent and ways American police organizations use social media, and explore the following question: to what extent and in what ways do police organization use social media? An ethnographic approach was adopted to illuminate officer personal perspectives and experiences (Hamersley, 2006). Information from a Southern American state was collected from three law enforcement agencies that serve approximately 1.6 million residents. These agencies are somewhat contiguous (within 100-mile radius of each other) and include county and city municipalities (hereafter and collectively referred to as Sunshine City). Residents of Sunshine City had an average household income just below $50,000 and somewhat mirrored national estimates for the racial and ethnic demographic characteristics during the data collection period (Census Bureau, 2017). Crime, in the observed areas, is lower than the national average across all index crimes and, in some instances, was half the national rate during the observational period (i.e., during the spring of 2017; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2016).

The core of this ethnographic approach centered on field observations that were facilitated through existing police–academic partnerships in the gatekeeper tradition. Building a rapport was critical to this qualitative approach and was gained over time and by word of mouth. As a testament to the mutual trust that existed between the officers and the researcher, subsequent experiences were facilitated by officers who often vouched for the researcher. This referral system allowed for multiple perspectives to be seen/heard and continued until data saturation was reached (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). Saturation was determined based on the repetitive nature of the responses and absence of novel answers. During the field observations, the researcher was transparent with the participants about the intent of the study, which was expressed in a mutually signed informed consent form retained by both parties. Furthermore, the researcher adopted the participant-as-observer role (Gold, 1958), whereby he shadowed officers during all aspects of routine deployments. This included (but was not limited too) riding with officers as they responded to calls for service, accompanying officers on rest breaks, attending agency briefings, observing outreach events, and witnessing covert surveillance work. With each of these experiences, the researcher was treated as a “marginal native” and sought to strike a balance between being a stranger and colleague to the officers (Hammersley & Arkinson, 2007; see also Deuchar, 2013). Individual observations varied from half- and whole-day contacts and were primarily in the afternoon or evening hours.

Throughout the researcher’s field observations, informal dialogs with officers were captured in field notes, which included “jottings” or snippets of conversations that occurred during police–citizen contacts and during direct conversation with the officers while they were on duty (Emerson et al., 1995). In addition to observations, the field notes reflected personal feelings and impressions that provide a broader contextualization of the conversations and events as they unfolded. Immediately following each field observation, the researcher typed-up and filled-in pertinent information, while the experience was still fresh. The over 40,000-word field notes analyzed in this study presented a rich description of the approximately 75 hours of observations that occurred during a four-month period (January to April, 2017).

To explore the field observational data in more depth, 20 of the observed officers were queried within semi-structured interviews, which were typically held in the officers’ or authors’ working environment but secluded from people passing by. Questions were individualized and focused on the impact of officer confidence, morale, and policing strategies emerging from high-profile news/social media coverage of events such as those occurring in Ferguson. To guide the interviews, however, an interview protocol was developed. Many of the interviews with officers led to conversations about police–citizen interactions in face-to-face and digital forums, although these encounters were not necessarily with officers directly responsible for maintaining their departments social media pages. The information officers provided was given freely and without repercussion. In fact, officers could withdraw from the study without penalty, although none did.

All participating officers were snowball sampled. The bulk of interviewed officers were law enforcement in the same county (n = 17, 85%) but differed widely in rank and responsibilities. Most, in fact, were assigned to specialized units (n = 16, 80%) or leadership positions (n = 9, 45%), including two chief executive administrators. Participating officers also varied in their length of service, with two decades of law enforcement experience being the average ( $x$ = 20.1 years, min. 4, max. 46). The overwhelming majority of interviewees were white (n = 16, 80%) and/or male (n = 18, 90%). Racial and gender concentrations, however, are consistent with national rates, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2013).

Interviews with the officers were audio-recorded and lasted, on average, just under an hour. Audio files were subsequently transcribed, producing 130,000 words of dialogue. A non-positivist approach was chosen to analyze the field notes and interview data. The authors first listened to the audio files and read the field notes line by line. Despite the research having a broader focus, the prominence of social media content during this initial review led to subsequent discussions among the authors. A more systematic isolation of relevant content in the field notes and interview transcripts was achieved in this analysis through the following search terms: “social”, “media” (excluding news media references), “Facebook”, “YouTube”, “Instagram”, “Twitter”, “hashtag”, “#”, “share”, “view”, “post”, “online”, “film”, “record”, “watch”, “tech”, “video”, and “internet”. From this inductive approach emerged a full study that we analyzed in more depth for the extent and ways officers made use of social media for enhancing public relations and investigative purposes.

This subsample of data was again inductively scrutinized for patterns and themes using axial coding (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). References were fairly overt and without vailed meanings, and therefore are presented with little interpretation among the identified themes. Themes are arranged in the findings section using grounded theory in narrative form, which was based on our knowledge of the existing extant literature on policing through social media (Charmaz, 2006). This approach to data analysis is most suited for our privileged participant perspective and is consistent with the interpretative paradigm. Finally, field observation notes and interview data were anonymized with pseudonyms in keeping with the agreed upon informed consent.²

Findings

Interviews and field observations indicated that the influence of social media on the policing profession was widespread. In fact, all of the officers discussed social media during the course of their interviews, and many brought it up during the researcher’s field observations. The most prominent social media platforms discussed were Facebook (including Facebook Live), Instagram, Myspace, Periscope, Xbox Live with Friends, and YouTube (in alphabetical order). Social media content fell into four themes: (a) bringing attention to the agency, (b) prospective criminal investigations, (c) retrospective criminal investigations, and (d) ongoing challenges of policing through social media.

Bringing attention to the agency

Many officers commented that they used social media, on behalf of their agency, to bring attention to their actions (Lee and McGovern, 2013). Jennifer, for example, told the researcher that they “put out in social media their positive influence”. Emily, however, was quick to dispel notions that the officers are self-promoting their activities; rather, they are caught in social media posts simply making their everyday civic contribution. To this effect, she proclaimed,

[It’s] not that they’re doing it to get their picture on Facebook but because that’s what that family needs. They needed that support. They needed something positive and they [the officers] go and they do it on their own. And usually it’s another officer standing next to them getting a picture of it going, “Caught you doing something good”. (Emily, police chief)

Some officers were more proactive in seeking to chronicle positive community events. The researcher’s field notes document one such instance when an officer suggested taking a photo with the researcher and posting it on the agencies social media page:

We walk further over and there is another group of cops. One of the officers there is responsible for media relations. He greets me and asks if he can take a photo of me with the team. He states, “We want to put some positive messages out on Twitter like this – the police working with a researcher from REDACTED. It helps to reassure the public that we are here and there are positive things happening”. I find it interesting to think that the police are using this proactive approach and that I am at the center of it. (Researcher’s field notes)

In addition to promoting community engagement, Daniel (a police sergeant) reported that social media was used to disseminate crime-related information when he declared that his agency “puts out in social media the arrests we made”. In many ways, these comments suggested that social media was used by our participants as a public relations tool, focused on both “pushing” positive news stories of community engagement approaches, and “pulling” citizens towards the agencies in order to share information about crime fighting strategies and achievements (Meijer and Thaens, 2013).

Prospective criminal investigations

Social media was also found to be used by law enforcement for more covert purposes. Several officers, for example, talked about proactively surveilling citizens through social media to collect information for threat assessments. Daniel discussed an instance of this in the researcher’s field notes:

Daniel shows me one young man whose girlfriend was recently shot and killed because members of her family were members of a rival gang. He says that, “The young man has been posting recently that he is completely confused and ‘f***ed up’ and ‘doesn’t know what he will do’”. As he scrolls down the young man’s social media site, I can see that in a recently added photo that he is blatantly posing with a gun. (Researcher’s field notes)

By patrolling social media pages, Kevin reported that officers were able to observe patterns of escalation that were communicated to street level officers. He said,

we can be relaying that core information out to officers. Or checking social media to see what he’s posting. “Hey, he had a 9 mm Glock last week. Now, this week, he’s got an AK-47”. So, if I got guys out there physically hunting for this person then they need to have that information, as well. (Kevin, sergeant)

The reconnaissance that was collected from social media pages could be subsequently used for proactive, intelligence operations, as Jack described,

If they’re talking about some type of gathering [on social media] that’s going to be going on and we know a bunch of gang members will be attending, we will pretty much put some type of operation [together] where we’ll go there and monitor any activity. Even if it’s a non-violent gathering, it’s still a tool that we use when we gain intel […] and then if there are any other crimes being committed by these individuals then we have gained the intelligence to identify potential suspects down the line. […] Social media is key right now with us. (Jack, detective)

In this regard, several officers professed that citizens did not know that they were being monitored on social media. To this point, Officer Jonathan commented that “a lot of times kids are so oblivious. They don’t realize that we are monitoring them”. Likewise, Daniel reported that,

These young men don’t realize, they sit in their bedroom on their cell phone and they put stuff on social media thinking that just their friends are seeing it. But it’s public, you know. It’s made public and we all see it. (Daniel, sergeant)

Surveillance work on social media platforms was often accomplished without detection in what detectives referred to as “ghosting”. John, for example, stated “we all have Facebook accounts because you need to be prepared to be a ghost”. Law enforcement were able to avoid detection by posing as attractive females and friending and/or following suspected criminals’ social media pages. The researcher’s field notes captured this phenomenon as an officer sought to develop a better understanding of a criminal network:

Daniel explains that he has infiltrated his and another young men’s sites by going undercover and posing as a young female who the young men then befriend. He can now go into each of their pages and examine the links they have with each other. (Researcher’s field notes)

Ghosting was necessary, officers communicated to the researcher, because if criminals knew their social media pages were being surveilled, their activities would go further underground. Jonathan illustrated this point when he disclosed to the researcher that,

They are so oblivious. They don’t realize that we are monitoring them. So, you like kinda play. […] You have to do it in a sense that it doesn’t really expose our efforts here because at the end of the day this can be our downfall, as well. So, we don’t want to provide too much information but at the same time, you know, doing in a way that it doesn’t really expose us. (Researcher’s field notes)

Law enforcement, throughout the interviews and field observations, identified several types of information that they collect from social media posts, including the identification of people and/or associates, weapons, vehicles, gang signs, tattoos, graffiti, and their connections to one another. Officers, however, seemed most sensitive to postings with guns. This was evident by the frequency in which officers referenced pictures and videos of citizens with guns. Michael (a detective), for example, described the urgency of one of his investigations by noting that the citizen was “flashing a gun on Facebook”. Others, like Gabriel (a special agent in the Violent Crimes Division) and Calvin (a patrol officer), were most interested in photos and videos on social media depicting assault rifles. Known felons in possession of a firearm prompted perhaps the greatest investigate attention. Michael recounted how these occurrences were handled in one of his cases.

I just did a case last week where the police officers have watched this guy they know. He’s a gang member. He’s a convicted felon. He posts to Facebook holding guns. So, I looked at the pictures up close and it’s a real gun: they’re not toys. Well they know where he lives and it’s a recent picture. We can’t arrest him but we can maybe get a search warrant […] to get in the house, which we’ve just done last week. So, they got a search warrant, got into this gang member’s home, and they got an assault rifle and a Glock pistol and this person was a multi-, seven time convicted felon. So, we took him. He went to jail. (Michael, detective)

Officers were clearly using social media regularly as an undercover investigative tool in order to identify people, locations, and criminal patterns (Trottier, 2011).

Retrospective criminal investigations

Additionally, officers discussed how social media could be used retrospectively when something happens. Officers, for example, would reference social media posts made around the time of the incident by people they believed are involved, which was observed in the researcher’s field notes:

He then looked across all the significant events that the young men had been involved in together, such as the shooting of a child who was caught in the crossfire from their gang shootings. Andrew shows me some film of a recent gang shooting, where 80 rounds of AK-47 ammunition had been used in a shoot-out. As I watch, I can see the bullet rounds emerging. (Researcher’s field notes)

This often contributes to law enforcement understandings about how events were promulgated. In a joint interview with Detectives Owen and Joshua the researcher asked the officers about a fight that had taken place at a high school football game. Owen explained that it was “one of those incidents that was on social media before we even got it under control. It was already on Facebook while we were still dealing with it. It helped because the videos they put on there”. Then Joshua added, “Yeah, great videos. They became evidence. It was awesome”.

Daniel divulged that he uses the information he procured from social media pages as a baseline check for the fidelity of a suspect, witness, or victim’s statement, when he said, “I know they can’t lie to me, so I find that rewarding when they try to lie to me, like I call them on their lies and then they don’t know what to do”. The importance of social media, as an investigatory tool, was later emphasized by Owen who expressed, that “there’s a long-standing joke that, you know, basically if it doesn’t happen on Facebook, it didn’t happen”. Substantively, social media is a tool that law enforcement use to understand trends in criminal behavior and build criminal cases (Williams et al., 2013). Unfortunately, however, Gabriel suggested that criminals were becoming wise to these investigative tactics and were, therefore, keeping a “more low profile” on social media.

Challenges

The utility of social media for law enforcement, however, was not unabridged, according to several officers. Luke, an outgoing police chief, for example, expressed concern for measuring the impact of social media when he was interviewed:

Everybody wants to look at things now in the Twitter age […]. You want to put a number on things. So, I don’t know how that values. I don’t know what it’s going to equate to but I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with it or any downside to it. (Luke, outgoing police chief)

Several other officers lamented that law enforcement were often behind the technological curve of criminal activity (as detected by Omand et al., 2012). To this point, Andrew [a detective] reported that some messages on social media still “can’t be intercepted”. Many officers observed, however, that advances in technology and social media were not slowing. Case in point, Noah [a sergeant] proclaimed that “technology is going to get better” and Police Chief Emily confirmed that “it’s always changing”.

Being slow to catch on to criminal activities in the digital age made some officers concerned that the offenders who were getting caught in social media investigations were low hanging fruits, while more serious offenders remained undetected. Luke articulated this point in his more broad criticism of police when he said,

there’s a saying with police that we only really catch the stupid ones. […] You would think that, you know, a lot of them they’re kind of the periphery guys or something like that. But the hard core ones that have some sense and knowledge they’ll keep it a little bit more low key than posting stuff. (Luke, outgoing police chief)

Finally, several officers reflected on how social media investigations impacted their work-flow. Some officers, for example, suggested that monitoring social media increased investigative efficacy (Trottier, 2011). In support of this contention, Andrew explained, “I may be sitting at my desk now watching six locations […but it is] actually better because you can get so much more done”. Similarly, Ryan noticed that investigations on social media were “just much more cost-effective”. Nevertheless, several officers commented that social media investigations were inconsistent with the action-packed crime-fighter image fueled by the need for the immediate gratification of arrests. Rather, such operations were characterized by more long-term desk investigations. Detective Andrew articulated this issue in the researcher’s field notes when he stated that,

“Most cops need that instant gratification of getting a result on the streets and putting the cuffs on someone. In this side of the work, you may need to wait 18 months to get a result. But if you wait long enough, you get bigger and better results than on the street. One guy we were watching got 30 years […] but most guys can’t do this job, you know. We are used to being ‘hound dogs’ – if it moved, we chased it out on the street – but the guys we were chasing were minions compared to those we are looking into now. We’ve progressed to detecting the organized, sophisticated gangsters”. (Researcher’s field notes)

On the one hand, it seemed that the use of social media in policing was clearly viewed as undermining the traditional “hard charger” image of frontline policing, characterized by a preference for aggression, confrontation, and enforcement. On the other hand, officers clearly valued it as an effective long-term investigative tool that ultimately generated better law enforcement results (Williams et al., 2013).

Discussion

In an era of unprecedented technological advancement, behavioral norms have changed dramatically and ushered in new challenges for industry leaders. The field of law enforcement is no exception, and this phenomenon is an indelible part of discussions on contemporary policing. Although researchers have explored the public’s engagement with social media in the post-Ferguson era, the current study explored law enforcement perspectives regarding the use of interactive online media and its impact on policing. As Wolfe and Nix (2016) suggested in their study of police willingness to engage communities, the voices of law enforcement are critical to discussions during times of increased police scrutiny. Although there are limitations to the generalizability of these findings (particularly related to the snowballed data collection), the rich narratives and perspectives provided by this qualitative inquiry are noteworthy. Furthermore, these findings help to provide access to the views of law enforcement in an environment of mixed public sentiment toward police.

Several themes emerged pertaining to the utility of social media as well as challenges to the effectiveness of policing in this new social context. Participants believed that social media is useful as a public relations tool and, in this regard, policing must follow the lead of other industries. While social media can be used to “push” (Meijer and Thaens, 2013) routine information on transportation delays, recent arrests, and sharing suspect information, there is also potential for getting the message out on salient policing initiatives with the aim of building trust in the community. Local agencies must also deal with negative public perceptions that stem from the alleged conduct of officers in other jurisdictions, especially in the post-Ferguson era. Where there is hostility toward police, justified or not, it can be especially challenging for local agencies to promote their own achievements, and increase awareness of positive efforts to engage the community, along with new crime-reduction approaches and the rationale behind them (Meijer and Thaens, 2013).

Participants also found social media to be an effective tool for acquiring intelligence. The use of social media, in this regard, allows police leaders to shape their priorities in ways that reflect the needs of the community. If the use of social media were part of an agency-wide policing strategy to “network” (Meijer and Thaens, 2013) with the community in a meaningful way, this could yield dividends for criminal investigations later on. Many of America’s large urban centers, for example, experience youth violence and delinquency issues. These areas could benefit if police were to proactively use social media to develop more syncretic and culturally informed approaches that resonate with youth (Williams et al., 2013). The New York City Police Department (NYPD), for example, along with other large agencies across the country, have found social media to be one of the simplest and most effective ways to connect with residents (Mueller and Singer, 2015). Intentional use of online platforms in this manner could sustain an open dialogue that can potentially bolster community-oriented approaches and reduce violence (Shead, 2017).

Another theme that emerged, closely linked with the notion of gathering intelligence, is that social media can also be a basis for prospective and retrospective criminal investigations. Regarding the former, a number of participants highlighted the importance of surveillance and threat assessment. Such approaches allow law enforcement to get information on potential crimes without being detected by their targets. Information found on social media, including the identification of people and/or associates, weapons, vehicles, gang signs, tattoos, graffiti, and their connections to one another, can greatly assist criminal investigations and can also help direct police resources and assets more efficiently. For retrospective investigations, officers can engage in online sleuthing and fill in the gaps when building crime-related timelines by looking for information that was posted around the time of the incidents in question (Trottier, 2011).

The usefulness of social media in advancing investigations, that may have otherwise been difficult to develop, was also highlighted in the findings. This benefit has not only been achieved in large metropolitan agencies. Smaller departments have reaped similar rewards. The Hot Springs (AR) Police Department, for example, reported that its social media campaigns had a 95% success rate in apprehending the most dangerous offenders. It also claimed that its online “crowdsourcing” approach, along with an initiative called “Warrant Wednesdays,” were successful “pull” (Meijer and Thaens, 2013) strategies for finding individuals with felony warrants that had evaded police (Police credit social media…Fox 16, 2018).

In spite of these merits, social media could also pose a challenge to police work. According to respondents, many of the individuals who were caught as a result of social media investigations might be deemed as “low-hanging fruits,” as the more serious offenders remained undetected. It is believed that police are not sophisticated users of technology and that tech-savvy criminals tend to be several steps ahead of the police. This potential shortcoming underlines the importance of creating interagency partnerships, like fusion centers, which can help strengthen the capabilities of law enforcement in terms of sharing information and resources. Such partnerships are particularly important as deep-fake and digital double technology/software evolves. In the future, law enforcement will have to parse real and augmented digital content to maintain the efficacy of their criminal investigations.

Moreover, law enforcement should be mindful of the unintended consequences of ostensibly spying on the public in digital spaces. While posing of as an attractive young female to ghost suspects may be legal, law enforcement risk alienating the public they need to solve crimes with this somewhat ethically questionable tactic. A deliberate balance must be struck between the public’s expectation of privacy and public safety and expressed in agency policy. This degree of transparency will promote a more thoughtful exchange, which is especially needed in the post-Ferguson era.

Conclusion

It is estimated that almost 3 billion people use social media, with approximately 200 million users in America (Statistica, 2019). Social media platforms are so entrenched in everyday life that industries have had to adopt new strategies to stay relevant and engage effectively with a dynamic community of consumers. Police departments are also adapting as demonstrated by the use of new technologies such a body-worn cameras, biometrics for data security, rapid DNA technology, and providing training to officers for these advancements. Law enforcement agencies should, therefore, be lauded for their willingness to use available technology to enhance public relations, community engagement, and criminal investigations.

Still, as we contemplate the future of law enforcement, there is concern that Constitutional rights are not given fair consideration by police when it comes to criminal investigations on social media (Raleigh, 2018), and that the infrastructure of police accountability must be redefined to address the changing needs of society (Walker and Archbold, 2014). Furthermore, it is a belief held by a growing number of users that if the Fourth Amendment protects citizens from warrantless searches where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, that this should also apply to clandestine investigations on social media pages (Lee, 2018). Sensitivity to these issues were heightened by the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica scandal. Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that closed operations in 2018, was accused of using and secretly keeping data from 50 million Facebook users without their permission. This led to widely reported investigations in America and the United Kingdom regarding the dealings of the company, and the leaders of Facebook and Twitter being called to hearings on Capitol Hill to answer questions on potential ethical violations (Sherr and Nieva, 2018).

In the aftermath of such breaches, there is a need for broader discussion on ways to ensure that social media companies protect user data from intrusive and unreasonable forms of social media mining (Lee, 2018). Although the mining of user data by private companies is beyond the scope of this research, it is still important to determine what is a “reasonable search” when it comes to police use of social media for investigative purposes. Indeed, the Community Control Over Police Surveillance laws that were passed in states such as California and Maine may be a step in the right direction (Lee, 2018). Such laws seek to empower residents to determine how surveillance technologies should be used. These issues, however, are by no means settled and it is clear that law enforcement agencies must navigate a whole new world when it comes to social media in the post-Ferguson era.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Seth Wyatt Fallik

Notes

References

Auston

(2017) Prayer, protest and police brutality: Black Muslim spiritual resistance in the Ferguson era. Transforming Anthropology 25(1): 11–22.

Bonilla

Rosa

(2015) #Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States. American Ethnologist 42(1): 4–17.

Brucato

(2015) The new transparency: police violence in the context of ubiquitous surveillance. Media and Communication 3(3): 39–55.

Bureau of Justice Statistics (2013) Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics. Washington, DC: Department of Justice.

Census Bureau (2017) Quick facts data. Available at: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045216 (accessed 3 March 2020).

Charmaz

(2006) Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Research. London: SAGE.

Deuchar

(2013) Policing Youth Violence: Transatlantic Connections. London: Trentham Books/IOE Press.

Deuchar

Fallik

Crichlow

(2018) Despondent officer narratives and the ‘post-Ferguson’ effect: exploring law enforcement perspectives and strategies in a Southern American State. Policing and Society 29(9): 1042–1057.

Donner

Maskaly

Fridell

Jennings

(2015) Policing and procedural justice: a state-of-the-art review. Policing 38(1): 153–172.

10.

Emerson

Fretz

Shaw

(1995) Writing Ethnographic Field Notes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

11.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (1995–2015) Crime in the United States. Washington, DC: Department of Justice.

12.

Fox

Holt

(2018) Fear of isolation and perceived affordances: the spiral of silence on social networking sites regarding police discrimination. Mass Communication and Society 21(5): 1–22.

13.

Gold

(1958) Roles in sociological filed observations. Social Forces 36: 217–223.

14.

Hammersley

(2006) Ethnography: problems and prospects. Ethnography and Education 1(1): 3–14.

15.

Hammersley

Arkinson

(2007) Ethnography: Principles in Practice. London: Routledge.

16.

Heverin

Zach

(2010) Twitter for city police department information sharing. Proceedings of the American Society for Information, Science, & Technology 47(1): 1–7.

17.

Rodgers

Lovrich

(2018) “We are more than crime fighters”: social media images of police departments. Police Quarterly 21(4): 544–572.

18.

International Association of Chiefs of Police (2015) IACP social media survey. Available at: http://www.iacpsocialmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/FULL-2015-Social-Media-Survey-Results.compressed.pdf (accessed 3 March 2020).

19.

Intravia

Wolff

Piquerp

(2018) Investigating the effects of media consumption on attitudes toward police legitimacy. Deviant Behavior 39(8): 963–980.

20.

Kochel

(2012) Can police legitimacy promote collective efficacy? Justice Quarterly 29(3): 384–419.

21.

Lee

McGovern

(2013) Force to sell: policing the image and manufacturing public confidence. Policing and Society 23(2): 103–124.

22.

Lee

(2018) Make privacy great again – Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, explained. Ars Technica. Available at: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/facebooks-cambridge-analytica-scandal-explained/ (accessed 3 March 2020).

23.

Lieberman

Koetzle

Sakiyama

(2013) Police departments’ use of Facebook: patterns and policy issues. Police Quarterly 16(4): 438–462.

24.

Maguire

Nix

Campbell

(2017) A war on cops? The effects of Ferguson on the number of US police officers murdered in the line of duty. Justice Quarterly 34(5): 739–758.

25.

Marwich

(2012) The public domain: social surveillance in everyday life. Surveillance & Society 9(4): 378–393.

26.

Meijer

Thaens

(2013) Social media strategies: understanding the differences between North American police departments. Government Information Quarterly 30(4): 343–350.

27.

Mueller

Singer

(2015) New York Police to use social media to connect with residents. New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/nyregion/nypd-to-use-social-media-platform-to-address-quality-of-life-issues.html (accessed 3 March 2020).

28.

Myhill

Bradford

(2012) Can police enhance confidence in improving quality of service? Policing and Society 22(4): 397–425.

29.

Omand

Bartlett

Miller

(2012) Introducing social media intelligence (SOCMINT). Intelligence and National Security 27(6): 801–823.

30.

Owen

(2017) Monitoring social media and protest movements: ensuring political order through surveillance and surveillance discourse. Social Identities: Journal of the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 23(6): 688–700.

31.

Pew Research Center (2018) Social media use in 2018. Available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/ (accessed 3 March 2020).

32.

Police credit social media and increased reward for arrests. Fox 16, 2018. Available at: https://www.fox16.com/news/local-news/police-credit-social-media-increased-reward-for-arrests/996176641 (accessed 3 March 2020).

33.

Pyrooz

Decker

Wolfe

Shjarback

(2016) Was there a Ferguson effect on crime rates in large U.S. cities. Journal of Criminal Justice 46: 1–8.

34.

Raleigh

(2018) Why police should monitor social media to prevent crime. Available at https://www.wired.com/story/why-police-should-monitor-social-media-to-prevent-crime/ (accessed 3 March 2020).

35.

Reiner

(2003)Policing and the media. In: Newburn

(ed.) Handbook of Policing. Cullompton, UK: Willan, 259–281.

36.

Shead

(2017) Local police use social media to build better relationships with community. Available at: https://news.jrn.msu.edu/2017/12/local-police-use-social-media-to-build-better-relationships-with-community/ (accessed 3 March 2020).

37.

Sherr

Nieva

(2018) Facebook and Twitter in DC: What the congressional hearings looked like up close. Available at: https://www.cnet.com/news/heres-what-facebooks-twitters-apology-tour-to-congress-looked-like-up-close/ (accessed 3 March 2020).

38.

Statistica (2019) The statistics portal. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/ (accessed 3 March 2020).

39.

Strauss

Corbin

(1998) Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

40.

Thorburn

(2014) Social media, subjectivity, and surveillance: Moving on from occupy, the rise of live streaming video. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 11(1): 52–63.

41.

Todak

(2017) The decision to become a police officer in a legitimacy crisis. Women & Criminal Justice 27(4): 250–270.

42.

Trottier

(2011) A research agenda for social media surveillance. Fast Capitalism 8(1): 1–13.

43.

Tyler

(1988) What is procedural justice? Criteria used by citizens to assess the fairness of legal procedures. Law & Society Review 22(1): 103–135.

44.

Tyler

Fagan

(2008) Legitimacy and cooperation: why do people help the police fight crime in their communities? Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 6: 231–275.

45.

Walker

Archbold

(2014) The New World of Police Accountability (2nd edn). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.

46.

Walker

Katz

(2013) The Police in America: An Introduction (8th edn). New York: McGraw-Hill.

47.

Williams

Edwards

Housley

Burnap

Rana

Avis

Morgan

Sloan

(2013) Policing cyber-neighbourhoods: tension monitoring and social media networks. Policing and Society 23(4): 461–481.

48.

Wolfe

Nix

(2016) The alleged ‘Ferguson effect’ and police willingness to engage in community partnership. Law and Human Behavior 40(1): 1–10.