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Reaching and engaging people: Analyzing tweeting practices of large U.S. police departments pre- and post- the killing of George Floyd
Finding ways to improve police legitimacy and police-community relations has for long been an important social issue in the United States. It becomes particularly urgent following the murder of George Floyd on May 25(th), 2020. An emerging area that holds potential in remediating police-community re...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9282545/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35834505 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269288 |
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author | Dong, Beidi Wu, Xiaoyun |
author_facet | Dong, Beidi Wu, Xiaoyun |
author_sort | Dong, Beidi |
collection | PubMed |
description | Finding ways to improve police legitimacy and police-community relations has for long been an important social issue in the United States. It becomes particularly urgent following the murder of George Floyd on May 25(th), 2020. An emerging area that holds potential in remediating police-community relations pertains to the use of social media by police. Yet, this body of research stays highly exploratory (e.g., case studies based on a small sample of agencies) and different viewpoints exist regarding the objectives of police social media usage. The current study identified 115 large police departments in the U.S. and collected their tweets over a 4-month period between 4/1/2020 and 7/31/2020. We investigated how police agencies (both individually and as an aggregate) leveraged social media to respond to the nationwide protests directed at the police and community reactions to such responses. We found that police agencies tweeted more frequently in the immediate aftermath of the murder and posted an increased number of civil-unrest related tweets. The public showed a greater interest in engaging with law enforcement agencies (i.e., average favorite and retweet counts) following the murder. A great variability emerged across agencies in their responses on social media, suggesting that examining only a handful of agencies or a particular dimension of social media usage would limit our understanding of police behaviors and citizen interactions on social media. In conclusion, we suggested a few avenues for future research (and practices) on responsible and effective use of social media by police, while pointing out the challenges associated with such inquiries. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9282545 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-92825452022-07-15 Reaching and engaging people: Analyzing tweeting practices of large U.S. police departments pre- and post- the killing of George Floyd Dong, Beidi Wu, Xiaoyun PLoS One Research Article Finding ways to improve police legitimacy and police-community relations has for long been an important social issue in the United States. It becomes particularly urgent following the murder of George Floyd on May 25(th), 2020. An emerging area that holds potential in remediating police-community relations pertains to the use of social media by police. Yet, this body of research stays highly exploratory (e.g., case studies based on a small sample of agencies) and different viewpoints exist regarding the objectives of police social media usage. The current study identified 115 large police departments in the U.S. and collected their tweets over a 4-month period between 4/1/2020 and 7/31/2020. We investigated how police agencies (both individually and as an aggregate) leveraged social media to respond to the nationwide protests directed at the police and community reactions to such responses. We found that police agencies tweeted more frequently in the immediate aftermath of the murder and posted an increased number of civil-unrest related tweets. The public showed a greater interest in engaging with law enforcement agencies (i.e., average favorite and retweet counts) following the murder. A great variability emerged across agencies in their responses on social media, suggesting that examining only a handful of agencies or a particular dimension of social media usage would limit our understanding of police behaviors and citizen interactions on social media. In conclusion, we suggested a few avenues for future research (and practices) on responsible and effective use of social media by police, while pointing out the challenges associated with such inquiries. Public Library of Science 2022-07-14 /pmc/articles/PMC9282545/ /pubmed/35834505 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269288 Text en © 2022 Dong, Wu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Dong, Beidi Wu, Xiaoyun Reaching and engaging people: Analyzing tweeting practices of large U.S. police departments pre- and post- the killing of George Floyd |
title | Reaching and engaging people: Analyzing tweeting practices of large U.S. police departments pre- and post- the killing of George Floyd |
title_full | Reaching and engaging people: Analyzing tweeting practices of large U.S. police departments pre- and post- the killing of George Floyd |
title_fullStr | Reaching and engaging people: Analyzing tweeting practices of large U.S. police departments pre- and post- the killing of George Floyd |
title_full_unstemmed | Reaching and engaging people: Analyzing tweeting practices of large U.S. police departments pre- and post- the killing of George Floyd |
title_short | Reaching and engaging people: Analyzing tweeting practices of large U.S. police departments pre- and post- the killing of George Floyd |
title_sort | reaching and engaging people: analyzing tweeting practices of large u.s. police departments pre- and post- the killing of george floyd |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9282545/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35834505 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269288 |
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