Social Media for Safety: Characterizing Online Interactions between Citizens and Police

Social media has emerged as a promising resource for police to connect with citizens for collective action. However the attributes of police citizen interactions on social media remain under-explored. In this paper, we utilise official and public Facebook pages of several police departments in India to study the patterns of engagement, emotions, and social processes between citizens and police in the context of day-to-day policing. We examine two prominent discussion threads: police initiated and citizen initiated. We find that topics exchanged in police initiated discussions are more focussed than citizen initiated threads; police focused on topics concerning safety awareness programs, action reports, and information regarding policing activities. Compared to police initiated discussions, citizen initiated discussions show lower engagement. Further, discussions involving both police and citizens show higher negative emotions, anger and arousal than citizen only discussions; these interventions involving both reveal a stronger notion of a collective identity. We discuss the implications of our work in designing technological support for improved policing and to help understand citizen opinions, safety concerns and well-being via social media.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Niharika Sachdeva

Ponnurangam Kumaraguru

Munmun De Choudhury

Conference

Publication date: July 2016

Publication date (Print): July 2016

Pages: 1-12

Affiliations

[0001]CERC, IIIT-Delhi

India, 110020

[0002]Georgia Tech

Atlanta, GA 30332

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2016.29

SO-VID: d1e19678-ad44-4cba-be11-67803104a85e

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of the 30th International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number: 30

Conference location: Bournemouth University, Poole, UK

Conference date: 11 - 15 July 2016

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Fusion

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2016.29

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

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J. BlomD. ViswanathanM. SpasojevicJ. GoK. AcharyaR. Ahonius 2010 Fear and the city: Role of mobile services in harnessing safety and security in urban use contexts In Proc. CHI ’10
G. CalcaraM. ForssM. J. TolvanenP. Sund 2015 The finnish internet police (nettipoliisi): towards the development of a real cyber police European Journal of Law and Technology 6 2
H. ChenD. ZengH. AtabakhshW. WyzgaJ. Schroeder 2003 January Coplink: Managing law enforcement data and knowledge Commun. ACM 46 1 28 34
M. D. ChoudhuryA. Monroy-HernandezG. Mark 2014 narco” emotions: Affect and desensitization in social media during the mexican drug war Proc. CHI ’14 ACM
C. CobbT. McCarthyA. PerkinsA. BharadwajJ. ComisB. DoK. Starbird 2014 Designing for the Deluge: Understanding and Supporting the Disturbed, Collaborative Work of Crisis Volunteers Proc. CSCW ’14
F. T. CullenP. WilcoxR. J. SampsonB. D. Dooley 2015 Challenging Criminological Theory: The Legacy of Ruth Rosner Kornhauser 1 Transaction Publishers
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L. M. Dekmar 2015 Sept Handling citizen complaints through proactive methodology http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id= 2052&issue_id=42010
S. DenefP S. BayerlN. Kaptein 2013 Social Media and the Police - Tweeting Practices of British Police Forces during the August 2011 Riots
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J. DruryS. Reicher 2000 Collective action and psychological change: The emergence of new social identities British Journal of Social Psychology
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C. A. LópezB. S. Butler 2013 Consequences of content diversity for online public spaces for local communities Proc. CSCW ’13 673 682 ACM
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N. SachdevaP. Kumaraguru 2015a Online social networks and police in india - understanding the perceptions, behavior, challenges
N. SachdevaP. Kumaraguru 2015b Social networks for police and residents in india: exploring online communication for crime prevention
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I. ShklovskiL. PalenJ. Sutton 2008 Finding community through information and communication technology in disaster response Proc. CSCW ’08
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B. Spalek 2013 Terror crime prevention with communities A&C Black
D. W. StephensJ. HillS. Greenberg 2011 Sept Strategic Communication Practices: A Toolkit for Police Executives Community Oriented Policing Services U.S. Department of Justice
J. TullioE. HuangD. WheatleyH. ZhangC. GuerreroA. Tamdoo 2010 Experience, adjustment, and engagement: The role of video in law enforcement Proc CHI ’10 1505 1514 ACM
S. ViewegA. HughesK. StarbirdL. Palen 2010 Micro-blogging during two natural hazards events: What twitter may contribute to situational awareness Proc CHI ’10 1079 1088
A. VoidaE. HarmonB. Al-Ani 2012 Bridging Between Organisation and the Public: Volunteer Coordinators ’ Uneasy Relationship with Social Computing Proc. CHI ’12 ACM 1967 1976
E. W. WelchS. Fulla 2005 Virtual interactivity between government and citizens: The chicago police department ’ s citizen icam application demonstration case Political communication 22 2 215 236
F. D. L. Wigand 2010 Twitter takes wing in government: Diffusion, roles, and management Proc. dg.o ’10
A. XuJ. BiehlE. RieffelT. TurnerW. van Melle 2012 Learning how to feel again: Towards affective workplace presence and communication technologies Proc. CHI ’12

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] V. ArnaboldiM. ContiA. PassarellaF. Pezzoni 2012 Analysis of ego network structure in online social networks In Proc. PASSAT and SocialCom 31 40 IEEE

[2] D. ArthurS. Vassilvitskii 2007 k-means++: The advantages of careful seeding In Proceedings of the eighteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

[3] J. BlomD. ViswanathanM. SpasojevicJ. GoK. AcharyaR. Ahonius 2010 Fear and the city: Role of mobile services in harnessing safety and security in urban use contexts In Proc. CHI ’10

[4] G. CalcaraM. ForssM. J. TolvanenP. Sund 2015 The finnish internet police (nettipoliisi): towards the development of a real cyber police European Journal of Law and Technology 6 2

[5] H. ChenD. ZengH. AtabakhshW. WyzgaJ. Schroeder 2003 January Coplink: Managing law enforcement data and knowledge Commun. ACM 46 1 28 34

[6] M. D. ChoudhuryA. Monroy-HernandezG. Mark 2014 narco” emotions: Affect and desensitization in social media during the mexican drug war Proc. CHI ’14 ACM

[7] C. CobbT. McCarthyA. PerkinsA. BharadwajJ. ComisB. DoK. Starbird 2014 Designing for the Deluge: Understanding and Supporting the Disturbed, Collaborative Work of Crisis Volunteers Proc. CSCW ’14

[8] F. T. CullenP. WilcoxR. J. SampsonB. D. Dooley 2015 Challenging Criminological Theory: The Legacy of Ruth Rosner Kornhauser 1 Transaction Publishers

[9] M. De ChoudhuryS. CountsE. Horvitz 2013 Predicting postpartum changes in emotion and behavior via social media Proc. CHI ’13

[10] L. M. Dekmar 2015 Sept Handling citizen complaints through proactive methodology http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id= 2052&issue_id=42010

[11] S. DenefP S. BayerlN. Kaptein 2013 Social Media and the Police - Tweeting Practices of British Police Forces during the August 2011 Riots

[12] E. J. DownesS. J. McMillan 2000 Defining interactivity a qualitative identification of key dimensions New media & society 2 2 157 179

[13] J. DruryS. Reicher 2000 Collective action and psychological change: The emergence of new social identities British Journal of Social Psychology

[14] Express News Service 2013 Is community policing need of the hour? http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/article1430481.ece

[15] H. Gil de ZúñigaN. JungS. Valenzuela 2012 Social media use for news and individuals’ social capital, civic engagement and political participation Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

[16] Z. Gill 2012 User-driven collaborative intelligence: social networks as crowdsourcing ecosystems CHI’12 Extended Abstracts

[17] T. HeverinL. Zach 2010 Twitter for city police department information sharing Proc ASIST ’10

[18] A. L. HughesL. A. St DenisL. PalenK. M. Anderson 2014 Online public communications by police & fire services during the 2012 hurricane sandy Proc. CHI ’14

[19] A. KavanaughE. FoxS. SheetzS. YangL. T. LiT. WhalenD. ShoemakerP. NatsevL. Xie 2011 Social media use by government: From the routine to the critical

[20] D. A. LewisG. Salem 1981 Community crime prevention: An analysis of a developing strategy Crime & Delinquency 27 3 405 421

[21] S. LewisD. A. Lewis 2012 Examining technology that supports community policing Proc. CHI ’12

[22] C. A. LópezB. S. Butler 2013 Consequences of content diversity for online public spaces for local communities Proc. CSCW ’13 673 682 ACM

[23] R. G. McGrayT. Thomas 2016 May Adult education & online hate http://projectsomeone.ca/adulteducation

[24] S. J. McMillanJ.-S. Hwang 2002 Measures of perceived interactivity: An exploration of the role of direction of communication, user control, and time in shaping perceptions of interactivity Journal of advertising 31 3 29 42

[25] M. MendozaB. PobleteC. Castillo 2010 Twitter under crisis: Can we trust what we RT? Proc. Social Media Analytics SOMA ’10

[26] I. Mergel 2014 Social media adoption: Toward a representative, responsive or interactive government? Proc dg.o ’14 163 170 ACM

[27] G. W. MilliganM. C. Cooper 1985 An examination of procedures for determining the number of clusters in a data set Psychometrika

[28] V. Nayak 2014 92 Million Facebook Users Makes India The Second Largest Country [STUDY] http://www.dazeinfo.com/2014/01/07/facebook-inc-fb-india-demographic-users-2014

[29] L. PalenS. Vieweg 2008 The Emergence of Online Widescale Interaction: Assiatance, Alliance and Retreat Proc. CSCW ’08

[30] K. J. PeakR. W. Glensor 2002 Community policing and problem solving: Strategies and practices Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River, NJ

[31] J. W. PennebakerM. R. MehlK. G. Niederhoffer 2003 Psychological aspects of natural language use: Our words, our selves Annual review of psychology 54 1 547 577

[32] Research commissioned by LexisNexis 2012 Social media use in law enforcement investigations

[33] N. SachdevaP. Kumaraguru 2015a Online social networks and police in india - understanding the perceptions, behavior, challenges

[34] N. SachdevaP. Kumaraguru 2015b Social networks for police and residents in india: exploring online communication for crime prevention

[35] B. SemaanG. Mark 2012 ‘Facebooking’ Towards Crisis Recovery and Beyond: Disruption as an Opportunity Proc. CSCW 27 36

[36] I. ShklovskiL. PalenJ. Sutton 2008 Finding community through information and communication technology in disaster response Proc. CSCW ’08

[37] A. Smith 2010 The theory of moral sentiments Penguin

[38] B. Spalek 2013 Terror crime prevention with communities A&C Black

[39] D. W. StephensJ. HillS. Greenberg 2011 Sept Strategic Communication Practices: A Toolkit for Police Executives Community Oriented Policing Services U.S. Department of Justice

[40] J. TullioE. HuangD. WheatleyH. ZhangC. GuerreroA. Tamdoo 2010 Experience, adjustment, and engagement: The role of video in law enforcement Proc CHI ’10 1505 1514 ACM

[41] S. ViewegA. HughesK. StarbirdL. Palen 2010 Micro-blogging during two natural hazards events: What twitter may contribute to situational awareness Proc CHI ’10 1079 1088

[42] A. VoidaE. HarmonB. Al-Ani 2012 Bridging Between Organisation and the Public: Volunteer Coordinators ’ Uneasy Relationship with Social Computing Proc. CHI ’12 ACM 1967 1976

[43] E. W. WelchS. Fulla 2005 Virtual interactivity between government and citizens: The chicago police department ’ s citizen icam application demonstration case Political communication 22 2 215 236

[44] F. D. L. Wigand 2010 Twitter takes wing in government: Diffusion, roles, and management Proc. dg.o ’10

[45] A. XuJ. BiehlE. RieffelT. TurnerW. van Melle 2012 Learning how to feel again: Towards affective workplace presence and communication technologies Proc. CHI ’12

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