Twitter & Modern Policing: New Research

In June 2013 the UK policy think-tank, Demos, published a new report that should be of considerable interest to Canadian police organizations: @MetpoliceUK: how twitter is changing modern policing: the case of the Woolwich aftermatch by Jamie Bartlett and Carl Miller.

http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/metpoliceuk

A word about Demos is useful at this point as it represents something noticably absent on the Canadian policy landscape. This is a progressive entity that undertakes substantial research on public policy issues and takes an "all-party" perspective. Their projects range from austerity measures, through crime and public safety, to residential care, and welfare.

The publication cited above is an extremely timely offering that provides readers with some much-needed insight into how this form of social media may be utilized by police organizations for a variety of purposes.

We have seen many so-called "twitcidents" occuring around the globe. In Vancouver, the Vancouver Police Department made consider use of social media intelligence (or, SOCMINT) following the devastating riot that followed the Stanley Cup playoffs in 2012.

Of considerable value is this publication's dissection of the flood of tweets that surrounded the death of Lee Rigby in Woolwich, England on May 22, 2013. Rigby was a drummer with the Royal Regiment of Fusilliers and his murder occurred in broad daylight. Lee Rigby

The authors of this report have downloaded and categorized all 19,344 tweets that included @metpoliceUK from May 17 to 23, 2013. This method of collecting, coding, and analyzing relevant tweets is an important technique that may prove commonplace for police organizations in the future. The researchers gave considerable thought to the ethics associated with this project and came to the conclusion that, given the inherent nature of tweets and the public status of the Met, there could be no reasonable expectation of privacy among the tweeters. In any event, the authors were diligent in stripping any identifiers from the tweets they have analysed in this report.

We are increasingly being informed by what researchers have taken to calling 'souveillance' which amounts to the recording of police actions by members of the public using various forms of technology. The events surrounding the deaths of Robert Dziekanski in Canada, Ian Tomlinson in the UK, and others are the direct result of this 'souveillance' by citizens equipped with recording equipment, like smart phones.

The authors of the Demos report include several recommendations that will benefit police organizations, or their civilian governing authorities, in relation to social media intelligence, including:

• establish the human and technological infrastructure to deal effectively with the social media aftermath of emergency situation. Essential to have a single point of contact within the organization;
• develop centralized capacity for SOCMINT; and
• Home Office should create a clear framework for the collection and use of SOCMINT across the UK's forty-three (43) police services.

Technological advances in social media have created an excellent tool for incoming and outgoing communications in modern police organizations. This publication demonstrates that social media will place increasing expectations upon police services to engage with the public using this platform. Twitter also offers some scope for investigative approaches that may harness the stream of information that flows from this type of source.