Social Media & Policing
Professor Peter Kawalek
Manchester Business School,
University of Manchester,
Manchester M15 6PB.
peter.kawalek@mbs.ac.uk
2011
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The Arab Spring
Mexico
Slogans & Logos in Spain & UK.
The Ideas/ Theory
The Issues
What to do about the questions
Social Media & Policing
Practical & tactical issues abound,
but there are also very profound
issues about the nature of the
society that is emerging & the
operation of the Police within it.
Communication is the structure that forms
society. Manuel Castells.
The
“Arab Spring”
Tunisia
Tunisia
Egypt
Syria
Mexico
#verfollow for the coastal city of Veracruz.
A word-count analysis of more than a quarter of a million tweets using the
hashtag #mtyfollow over the course of nine months (11/2010 to 8/2011)
shows how hashtags are used as a common resource. People hook into the
hashtag to "report" ("REPORTAN", in Spanish), issue warnings ("precaución",
"cuidado") and request confirmation ("confirmar") about shootings
("balacera", "detonaciones" "balazos") in certain areas of the city ("zona",
"Cumbres", "Av", "Sada"). You can also see the popularity of some user
handles in the messages. Together, people such as @trackmty, @AnaRent
and @cicmty, have more than 85,000 followers and 65,000 tweets. These
people have become reliable information news sources.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_hashtag_narcocensorship.php
Child Kidnap Rumours
CNN Report
Slogans &
Logos in
Spain & UK
Cavendish Press
Ideas &
Theory
1.
2.
3.
4.
Transaction Costs
Network Theory
Attention Poverty
Latency & Legitimacy
Transaction Costs
• Transaction Costs
– The whole cost of acquisition of something.
• Price
• Search costs / knowing of its existence.
• Comparison
– Relates to Castells’ ideas of network constructions
of power
Network Theory
• Network Theory
– Inclusion / Exclusion
– Coordination through standards
– Assignment of meaning
Network Theory
• Network Theory
– Inclusion / Exclusion
• The gatekeeping function of the media
• “What was not mentioned in the New York Times,
didn’t exist.” Castells. (or BBC, News International etc)
– Coordination through standards
– Assignment of meaning
Network Theory
• Network Theory
– Inclusion / Exclusion
• The gatekeeping function of the media
• “What was not mentioned in the New York Times, didn’t
exist.” Castells. (or BBC, News International etc)
– Coordination through standards
– Assignment of meaning
• “Shaping the mind is more effective than torturing the
bodies”
– Manuel Castells
Network Theory
• Network Theory
– Inclusion / Exclusion
• The gatekeeping function of the media
• “What was not mentioned in the New York Times, didn’t
exist.” Castells. (or BBC, News International etc)
– Coordination through standards
• Can be technical e.g. use of Blackberry, SMS etc., but
standards are also cultural.
– Assignment of meaning
• “Shaping the mind is more effective than torturing the
bodies”
– Manuel Castells
Network Theory
Assignment of meaning
• Any media is concerned with meanings.
• So, in the social network to which he belongs, does this
image make him more a hero or more a villain?
• Attention Poverty
• Attention Poverty
“...in an information-rich world, the wealth of
information means a dearth of something else: a
scarcity of whatever it is that information
consumes. What information consumes is rather
obvious: it consumes the attention of its
recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates
a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that
attention efficiently among the overabundance of
information sources that might consume it”
(Simon 1971)
• No longer a society huddled around the sofa,
BBC, ITV or down the local.
• Now, an infinite number of media products,
channels, flavours, justifications, ideologies,
truths, half-truths, misrepresentations & edits.
The Issues
• Crime in a society where messages pass more
quickly and less predictably than before
• Crime & anonymity on the net
• Electronic surveillance
• A society based on technical cohesion rather than
ideology or cultural cohesion (e.g. Apple &
Blackberry as platforms rather than politics,
religion or shared experience)
– A society with neither pulpit, nor t.v.
• Scaling up / scaling down – social issues as
wildfire (adapting an idea of John Arquila)
• Transparency (of citizens, of officers)
People can earn money
from You Tube
Researching
& Defining
The Issues.
• Agenda-setting
• Working out what the issues are
• Working on solutions, from
germination through to practice.
• Lab
• Action Research
• Ethnography
• Mixed Methods
• Police / academics / students
/community
– mutual learning & unlearning
Social Media & Policing
Practical & tactical issues abound,
but there are also very profound
issues about the nature of the
society that is emerging & the
operation of the Police within it.
Twitter: @kawalek
Facebook: I’m a conscientious objector.
Email: peter.kawalek@mbs.ac.uk