Social media gives us an invaluable capability to distribute important information to thousands of people instantly.
As someone who’s been using social media for a while now, I’m always keen to promote it as a great channel of communication through which the police can keep in touch with the public.
I’ve written about why we use social media in the past and my views have only strengthened since then – it’s an incredibly valuable tool for us and we use it in a variety of different ways.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, or maybe if you follow my Twitter feed, you’ll see how I try and use social media to break down the barriers between police and public, to educate, inform and entertain.
A couple of weeks ago I was involved in an incident which I think really highlights why social media is something that can’t be ignored when it comes to effective policing.
Officers on my shift had taken a report of an extremely high risk missing person. We had genuine reason to be concerned over her immediate safety and to make matters worse, had few leads as to where we might find her.
Alongside the actions that we’d take as due course – searches of open ground, use of dog units and the helicopter – we knew that publicity would play a crucial role in locating the person.
I’d been asked to help deliver leaflets to local pubs and shops but due to the time at which we began this exercise, after eleven at night, it was clear that we’d not reach many people this way. We’d not be able to issue a press release until the morning and short of knocking on doors, there weren’t many options for alerting the public.
This was where having in my pocket a device that could immediately send a message to 3,500 predominately local people was absolutely invaluable. Within minutes I was able to upload a photo of our missing person onto Twitter with her details and ask that should she be seen, we be contacted immediately.
Within an hour or so of putting the update onto Twitter, my appeal had been forwarded on by dozens of other followers across the social network. I worked out afterwards that the combined number of followers that it reached through being forwarded on was over 27,000. The photo itself was viewed more than 600 times.
In the same hour we distributed posters to a handful of petrol stations and the few pubs that were still open. I can’t imagine that more than a hundred people would have seen them all night.
In this example, the missing person was found safe and well the following day. Publicity had been further aided by appeals being made to the 30,000 followers of the official West Midlands Police Twitter account, our 10,000 Facebook subscribers and on the appeals section of the website which attracts several hundreds of thousands of views every month.
The scope for reaching thousands of people instantly, for responding to incidents in real time and not having to wait on traditional forms of communication to catch up with events shows how important social media can be to delivering an effective service.
In being able to serve the public – and crucially a vulnerable person – in such an effectual manner shows that when it comes to social media, the argument against our involvement is a very hard one to make.
Interesting blogpost, but it does highlight a slightly blinkered view of the ‘new media v traditional media’ argument. Yes, social media offered a chance for an immediate appeal and has a place in the media strategy of every organisation. However, it has its limitations. Limitations that supporters fail to acknowledge or try to disguise.
Yes, you reached thousands of people. However, your message is only as good as the local audience it touches. A quick look at the first ten of your followers (I appreciate not wholy representative sample, but it is a random one that proves a point) shows followers from rainy Scotland, Lanarkshire, Northants police, north east of England. Oh and LA.
Not very useful in a missing persons appeal in Walsall.
As for “traditional forms of communication having to catch up”, unfortunately you didn’t enter them into the race. If the misper was that urgent then an on-call press officer should have been called and put out an appeal. There are 24hr news channels, local radio stations, local TV bulletins and newspapers with ready-made audiences which have late night reporters were all ready to report on your message.
Only you chose not to inform them. Hardly a fair comparison.
While you had time to print off leaflets, it seems you didn’t have time to call on the on-call press officer.
Yes, social media has a place. But it is not the panacea that devotees of social media suggest. The police are quick to talk about how many followers they have based on numbers alone.
Having done a study on a random couple of your fellow police tweeters, I found two thirds were police officers following other police officers (both local and national forces). Then there was a chunk of other officials (police and non-police) from across the country, then there were members of the public (possibly former residents etc) from elsewhere in the country or the world. And THEN there were local residents that the officers served.
A generous calculation showed 15 per cent of their followers were local people from ‘their community’. So, all of a sudden that giant looks a hell of a lot smaller. It often doesn’t suit social media types to scratch beneath the surface when they want to shout from the rooftops about how good they are, but just a quick study shows it is not always as good as claimed.
I think the example certainly shows the potential social media has alongside other, more traditional, forms of communication to help effectively get a message across.
When it comes to who the messages reach, I think for a large part the audience will be determined by who is forwarding on the information. You’re right to state that my own followers are from here, there and everywhere however updates retweeted by the right accounts will find their way back to the target audience.
I’d imagine both Walsall Police’s own account, the West Midlands Police main feed and other supporting agencies such as Walsall Council will have a following composed more in favour of local people and so when they pass individual officer’s messages on, it’s much more likely that their reaching the people they need to.
Further to this, the individuals who were retweeting the appeal would only be doing so if it were likely to be relevant to where they live and as such, I’m sure many were doing so in the knowledge that many of their own followers are also local and so would benefit from seeing the appeal.
It’s also important to consider that social networks can be a bridge between new media and traditional media. Many journalists follow our accounts and so information that we make public has a direct channel through which it can find its way back into the papers, onto the radio and TV.
Rich