Dutch police, social media & crisiscommunication

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Welcome! I’m going to tell you about the Dutch police, crisiscommunication and social media and how these are interconnected. But first, let me introduce myself.

My name is Natalie Hensen, 34 years old, I once studied Sociology at the Erasmus university in Rotterdam and I love social media. These are all tools I currently use. And I even might have missed one or two.

After my studies and some temp jobs I started as a policy officer at a local library. After 4 years, I switched to the police in Utrecht where I worked for 6,5 years. Since this month I switched jobs again and I’m now an online communications advisor at Conclusion Communication, a business services company. But, enough about me!

Feel free to ask questions at any time if you have them!

In 2009: with a few enthusiastic colleagues from different police units in Holland we started trying out Twitter for local police officers. I developed an e-learning for all police employees to get to know the online world.

Now there are a lot of social media accounts run by police officers and communications departments; they are mostly a great success!

The advantages of using social media for police officers:
It works both ways: if officers give information, they get it back, which helps their investigation work
It makes it easy for citizens to contact their local police officer
Citizens know more about the police work
The officers build authority; when there is a big incident or crisis, followers turn to their police unit or officer for information

Police officers who want to communicate using social media, got a social media workshop. I explained to them the advantages, how it works, lots of tips and tricks and also a lot examples of how to tweet or not to tweet..
It is important for everyone at the police to be aware of the impact of tweets and posts, even if they are not an actual police officer. So there were also workshops digital awareness for all other employees

Tweet from a local police officer: my new friend for the rest of my career: I will just say: don’t F with the local police officer!
Two types of reactions:
People thought it was not funny because the gun looks scary and a police officer shouldn’t joke about violence
People thought it was funny to make parody pictures, like don’t F with the happy housewife and don’t F with the town councilor

In 2014 there was a big international conference in The Hague, the Nuclear Security Summit. Many police officers were working that weekend and many politicians were there, including president Obama. He moves around in his car, The Beast.
The guy in this tweet was told by the police he was not allowed to make pictures. And later on, this is what he saw.. Police officers really live in a glass house and need to pay attention to what they do all the time. Everyone is a reporter nowadays.

The Rotterdam police thought it would be funny to do a little quiz with their followers. They posted this picture and said: “An enormous blood trail going from the Weena, Diergaardesingel to the Anna Paulownastreet. What kind of crime?” A few minutes later the answer followed: “I won’t keep you in suspence any longer: it was a fallen bucket of blood from the truck of a butcher”.
This is a typical inside joke of the police. They didn’t realise that people seeing this picture could get scared from seeing all the blood.

There are so many socialmedianetworks to join; should police officers be everywhere to reach as many citizens as possible? Or should they choose? And if so, how to choose: networks with many people, many youth, networks that fit the preference of the officers (so they stay motivated)? How to prevent there is no time for real policework anymore? With only Twitter a lot of police officers complain they have too less time to engage.
Sleeping accounts arise when the police officers are demotivated or can’t find the time to post. They can be harmful for the image of the police so they should be deleted. But is this really a wise thing to do? Others can take over the account and impersonate the police officer and maybe it is just a matter of an inspirational workshop to get the police officer tweeting or posting on Facebook again. Or are they afraid to make mistakes and be judged for it, by their boss ánd the public?Social media makes everyone a critic. So many people are watching over your shoulder to see if you slip up, checking what you missed, judging whether you were thorough enough, questioning your agenda. The whole world is watching..
In the article of Denef, Bayerl and Kaptein about the tweets from the British police during de August 2011 riots, two approaches were defined: instrumental and expressive. The question is, which is best for a unique organisation as the police? The police maintains the law, so they should be neutral and objective at all times. Does an expressive approach fit for an organisation like this? How far can you go? What kind of relationship does the police want to have with the public, and what kind fits with the most important values of the police: watchful and subservient? At this point there are many differences between the police accounts on social media. It would be interesting to see what the results of both kinds of approaches are to see if one wins over the other.

MH17 plane crash
Killings at Charlie Hebdo
Killings in Tunisian museum

Ferguson, death of Michael Brown in August 2014. Police officer charged against internet and the media. And yes, social media can be where people go to repeat what they want to hear or are already inclined to believe, on all sides.
Protesters are using Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr to spread the word about planned protest locations, sending text messages with announcements and collecting donations and supplies.
Rumors and misinterpretations appear alongside official accounts and expert analysis in a giant stew of instant commentary.
Information about the case is sooner than ever available for everyone.

MH17: in the summer of 2014 (july 17th) a plane with 298 people crashed in the Ukrain. Nobody survived and the government is still investigating why this happened, although reporters say they have evidence that the plan was shot down by a buk missile.

Many people searched the web and social media for hints on what happened exactly. They did online forensic investigation. The danger: conspiracy theories. People find evidence for the most crazy ideas about what happened. Usually that kind of people also is negative about the government and police work.
It is the first time that evidence of such a major disaster are given to the public so quickly. Intelligence departments but also blogs and news sites publish good analysis. The investigation of the truth has become open source.

Klik op RIBBON voor filmpje – who did it?

People shared the names of the victims on Twitter and Facebook. They made a mash-up on Google Maps and here you see a map with all the victims. You can find a lot of background information by searching social media.

On social media people shared their grieve for the victims and support for the family members.

So in this case people used social media to do online research and also they grieved through social media. With the black ribbon they showed support for the families of the victims.

In January this year masked gunmen, dressed in black and armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles got out and approached the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine. Linked to this was a hostage situation in a supermarket where also people got killed and wounded. In total they killed 12 people, 11 got wounded.

Instantly, people shared images made by the media. The Charlie Hebdo massacre was the moment when social media were where we gathered: it dominated the information we shared and reacted to.

In this case people used social media to support cartoonists and show solidarity.

Tunesian Bardo museum 18th March: 23 people died, from which 20 tourists. on social media a campaign started with the hashtag “Iwillcometotunisia”

The ”I will come to Tunisia” social media campaign is aimed at protecting the North African nation's tourism industry -- which is critical to the country's economy. The social media campaign features users holding up signs saying they will travel to the North African country.
People around the world are pledging to visit Tunisia this summer as a sign of solidarity following the deadly attack on the Bardo museum on Wednesday.

In this case people use social media to support Tunisian tourism and show solidarity.

From the previous examples you can see that it is a true challenge for the police and other governmental organisations to deal with the buzz, rumours and information overload that emerge during and after a big incident.

I will now tell you a little bit about three big incidents that happened in the Netherlands not too long ago. I will tell you about aspects that concern the crisis communication of the police and other governmental organisations.

September 2012. It was a true hype, Twitter exploded with 400.000 messages about project X Haren. Things went totallly wrong that evening.
How could this have happened?
Why was public transport still going to Haren?
Why was the village not shut down?
Why did the mayor think it was wise to take off street signs with the existence of Google Maps?

So they started a commission who researched questions like this. In March 2013 they concluded, in a report called ‘Two Worlds’:
The young people who came to Haren were mostly from the North of Holland
Hooligans did not play a part in this incident
Alcohol did the most damage
The authorities had no control from the start on what was happening and had no clear strategy, so police officers didn’t know what to do
The mayor didn’t do enough with his powers and waited too long to call for help
The mayor quit after this.

To zoom in on the crisis communication:
Underestimation is a key word here
Since there was no plan, there was bad communication, between the local government and the police for example
The police used the available expertise for monitoring internet too little and too late
The police did not intervene in the communication about the party, which was mostly on Facebook

May 2013. Divorced parents, dad takes the two sons, drives a long way and then kills himself. His dead body is found in the morning and by the time the evening falls, everyone is alarmed about the two boys. For two weeks the police searches for the missing boys, until they were found dead in a ditch. The impact of social media is enormous: many people organise searches in the woods where dad might have been. It was mainly organised through Facebook. At first, the police warned people about these spontaneous actions – it is traumatic to find dead bodies or body parts, they could mess up evidence by walking there – but in second instance the police tried to embrace the searches by accompanying the citizens. There was contact between the organisers and the police.

In the crisis communication, we:
Monitored what people knew, what questions they had, what their opinions were about the police and what they did
With this analysis, we tried our best to communicate with the public about what the police was doing to find the boys, process communication
We responded to questions on social media as best as we were able to
As soon as we could, we communicated important information about the case, so people could help us figure out what happened

Januari 2015: a man with an important message intrudes the building of the NOS with the studio of the 8 o’clock news. He demands air time and threatens to use his gun.
Remarkable: for over an hour people at home stared at a blanc tv screen saying there was a disruption. People on social media knew very fast what was happening, since reporters that fled the building were reporting about it on social media. Within 15 minutes, people had already found out who the guy with the gun was and where he lived…
Also remarkable: the news station showed images of the intruder and his arrest, without filters, over and over again. In very good quality…

The man said he was part of a hackers team that was ready for a cyber attack. There were explosives with radioactive material on eight locations in Holland. In the end it appeared that he acted alone and the gun appeared to be fake.

In the crisis communication, we did:
Monitor what people knew, what questions they had, what their opinions were about the police and what they did
Try to give as much information as possible to the public about the actions of the police. Also the mayor was very quick in trying to reassure citizens
This was such a quick intervention that it was hard to keep up with the communications

This video was shot by a reporter who followed the police going in to arrest the intruder. Although it was very risky of him to do this, there is some great footage about real police action here.

You build trust. So that if something happens, people turn to you for information. Because they trust you, they believe what you say is true. This helps in putting false rumours in the shadow and getting your own message to everyone that needs to know.

One of the great challenges is to get the organisation of the police and other governmental organisations to move as quickly as the online world does; it happens a lot that a press release with facts is not new anymore since everybody already knows all the facts. It probably took a very long while to get agreement on the message and so it was actually too late to even release it.

It is estimated that 80% of dealing with a crisis is communication! So you better be good at it.

Having great reach comes in handy in crises.
137,000 followers on the national police Twitteraccount. On 16.8 million inhabitants that is quite a big audience, with lots of influencers like journalists and famous Dutch people with many followers themselves. A lot of the corporate police Twitteraccounts have a lot of followers.

The crisis communications team exists since 2012. Founding father mr. Van Gooswilligen, he was then head of the communications department of the area of Hollands Midden, truly believed in the concept of a national team of experts that could be deployed at a local police unit in times of need, when there would be a crisis they couldn’t handle.
In a crisis, it is important to have very clear roles for all the players, so there is no miscommunication and work is done efficiently. There is always the time pressure in crises.

So you have the analists of the outside world, the advisors, the spokespersons, the logistics experts, the editors, the Q&A-specialists, social media specialists. They all do their own jobs.

First the analist gives his report of the outside world in three parts
Information: what are people talking about, what information do they have about the situation, do they have questions?
Signification: what do people think of the situation and the actions of the police?
Action perspective: what do people actually do, for example are they going to search the woods for the missing kids?
Second, the advisor reads the report of the analist and formulates the communication advice for the spokesperson.
Also the Q&A-specialist tries to answer all the questions the public has. The editors make and publish all the necessary content, on the website, social media and wherever they need to.
In real life situations, the order is not really like this, because reporters start calling the minute something happens, so you have very little time to do the analysis of the outside world first.

Besides the internal roles, there is also an external one: the contra speaker. Their role is to evaluate how the communication of the police is doing, if something is missing, if the tone of voice is right, what are reactions from the surroundings of the contra speaker? The contra speaker gives this information to the crisis communication team so they know where they can improve their communications.
There are now crisis communications teams in every one of the 10 police units in the Netherlands, but still the national team will exist as an expert team for the local police units.

Who can tell the best stuff about the CCT? The head of the CCT himself! So I interviewed him and also Marco Leeuwerink, who is team leader for the cct and also knows a lot about social media in crises.

As you have seen, social media have an immense impact on crises, in very different ways. People use it to do research, show support and solidarity and put false information or conspiracy theories in the world.

Since the online world is changing quickly and all the time, governmental organisations need to find a way to deal with that, find answers for questions and dilemmas, as I mentioned earlier.
It is estimated that 80% of dealing with a crisis is communication!

When you watch the news and look for crises, you will find many, also in companies, countries, etc. To learn more, take a crisis and analyse it. What are people saying, thinking and doing on social media? How does it influence the traditional media and what does it do to the crisis itself? What can you learn from it and what could they have done differently?

Thank you for having me and good luck with your studies!