The document discusses the engagement of policing organizations with citizens via social media, highlighting the use of social media to communicate about various public safety topics. It identifies key factors influencing citizen engagement, such as content characteristics and posting style, and presents research findings on the effectiveness of different social media strategies. Recommendations for improving public engagement include focusing on clear messaging, interaction with communities, and maintaining a positive reputation.

1. 1!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
1!
Policing Engagement
via Social Media
Miriam Fernandez, Tom Dickinson, and Harith Alani. ”And analysis of UK policing engagement via
social media." International Conference on Social Informatics. Springer International Publishing, 2017.
Miriam Fernandez, A. Elizabeth Cano, and Harith Alani. "Policing engagement via social media."
International Conference on Social Informatics. Springer International Publishing, 2014.
Presenting: Miriam Fernandez
@miriam_fs
fernandezmiriam
@miriamfs

2. 2!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
2! Policing Engagement via Social Media
• Policing organisations use social
media to spread the word on
crime, severe weather, missing
people, …
• Many forces have staff dedicated
to this purpose and to improve the
spreading of key messages to
wider social media communities
• Research shows that exchanges
between police and citizens are
infrequent

3. 3!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
3! Goal
• Understand what attracts
citizen’s to social media
policing content
– What are the characteristics of the
content that generate higher
attention levels
• Writing style
• Time of posting
• Topics
– Help police forces to identify actions
and recommendations to increase
public engagement

4. 4!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
4! Context: UK Policing
Corporate! Non-corporate!

5. 5!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
5! Understanding Engagement
• Social media engagement has been studied
– Through multiple lenses (marketing, social sciences, computer science)
– In multiple scenarios (product selling, elections, campaigns, etc.)
• Study the literature of social media engagement
– [Ariely] Very clear message with a very concrete action
• Patrol, missing persons, incidents, emergencies, local authorities? What
can/should I do?
– [Vaynerchuk] Need to differentiate each social medium (context)
• What happens in the world? To whom is the message targeted?
• Study the literature of social media police engagement
– Works mainly focus on studying the different social media strategies that police
forces use to interact with the public
• [Denef] UK Riots 2011. Instrumental vs. expressive approach

6. 6!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
6! Barriers of Social Media Police Engagement (I)
• Legitimacy
The police needs the trust and confidence
of the communities they serve
!

7. 7!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
7! Barriers of Social Media Police Engagement (II)
• Reputation
• Official communication
channels (911)
• Surveillance
• Variety of topics
• Budget

8. 8!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
8! Approach (I)
• Data Collection
– 154,679 posts from 48 corporate Twitter accounts
– 1,300,070 posts from 2,450 non-corporate Twitter
accounts
– January 2017
• Engagement Indicators
– Retweets
• % of tweets retweeted
• Average number of retweets per tweet
– Favourites (likes)
• % of tweets favourited (liked)
• Average number of likes per tweet
– Replies
• At the time of analysis Twitter API does not allow to
collect replies per tweet

9. 9!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
9! Just for some fun! J How am I doing?

10. 10!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
10! Engagement Indicators (I)
• Most accounts have more than 60% of tweets retweeted
– Top 5: MET, Nottinghamshire, Northumbria, Northamptonshire, Cumbria
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
northumbriapol
nottspolice
JerseyPolice
DurhamPolice
NYorksPolice
Cumbriapolice
swpolice
policescotland
SuffolkPolice
DC_Police
CityPolice
NWPolice
StaffsPolice
HertsPolice
NCA_UK
ClevelandPolice
HantsPolice
Humberbeat
kent_police
DyfedPowys
gwentpolice
CambsCops
LancsPolice
leicspolice
WMerciaPolice
cheshirepolice
sussex_police
warkspolice
WMPolice
PoliceServiceNI
EssexPoliceUK
ThamesVP
NorthantsPolice
bedspolice
metpoliceuk
NorfolkPolice
Glos_Police
ASPolice
dorsetpolice
wiltshirepolice
WestYorksPolice
lincspolice
MerseyPolice
SurreyPolice
gmpolice
iompolice
syptweet
DerbysPolice
% tweets retweeted

11. 11!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
11! Engagement Indicators (II)
• Most accounts receive in average 10 retweets per tweet
– Top 5: MET, Jersey, National Crime Agency, West Midlands, Scotland
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
northumbriapol
nottspolice
JerseyPolice
DurhamPolice
NYorksPolice
Cumbriapolice
swpolice
policescotland
SuffolkPolice
DC_Police
CityPolice
NWPolice
StaffsPolice
HertsPolice
NCA_UK
ClevelandPolice
HantsPolice
Humberbeat
kent_police
DyfedPowys
gwentpolice
CambsCops
LancsPolice
leicspolice
WMerciaPolice
cheshirepolice
sussex_police
warkspolice
WMPolice
PoliceServiceNI
EssexPoliceUK
ThamesVP
NorthantsPolice
bedspolice
metpoliceuk
NorfolkPolice
Glos_Police
ASPolice
dorsetpolice
wiltshirepolice
WestYorksPolice
lincspolice
MerseyPolice
SurreyPolice
gmpolice
iompolice
syptweet
DerbysPolice
Average Number of Retweets

12. 12!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
12! Engagement Indicators (III)
• Some organisations retweet from others rather than
originating discussions
– Northumbria, Nottinghamshire, Jersey, Durham, North Yorkshire
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
northumbriapol
nottspolice
JerseyPolice
DurhamPolice
NYorksPolice
Cumbriapolice
swpolice
policescotland
SuffolkPolice
DC_Police
CityPolice
NWPolice
StaffsPolice
HertsPolice
NCA_UK
ClevelandPolice
HantsPolice
Humberbeat
kent_police
DyfedPowys
gwentpolice
CambsCops
LancsPolice
leicspolice
WMerciaPolice
cheshirepolice
sussex_police
warkspolice
WMPolice
PoliceServiceNI
EssexPoliceUK
ThamesVP
NorthantsPolice
bedspolice
metpoliceuk
NorfolkPolice
Glos_Police
ASPolice
dorsetpolice
wiltshirepolice
WestYorksPolice
lincspolice
MerseyPolice
SurreyPolice
gmpolice
iompolice
syptweet
DerbysPolice
Ratio non-original tweets

13. 13!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
13! Non-Corporate accounts (I)
• 50% of the accounts have more than 60% of tweets
retweeted
• Top 47 accounts have a higher ratio of retweets than
corporate organisations (around 80%)
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
% of tweets retweeted

14. 14!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
14! Approach (II)
• Feature Extractors
– Describe tweets in terms of their characteristics
– Content Features
• Length / Readability / Informativeness / Complexity / Sentiment
• Media / mentions / hashtags / URLs
• Time in the day
– User Features
• Network: In-degree / out-degree
• Activity: Post count / post rate / age in the system
– Semantic Features
• Use knowledge bases to extracts entities and concepts
– Persons / Organisations / Locations
• Use Machine Learning techniques to determine the characteristics
“patterns” of those tweets receiving higher engagement levels

15. 15!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
15! Results (I)
• Tweets receiving higher engagement are:
– Longer, easier to read, more informative, lower complexity (avoid
complex terms), include media items (images, videos).
– In terms of user features they tend to be posted by accounts with a
high number of followers (corporate) or with a high post rate and a
high in-out degree ratio (non-corporate).
neg pos
051015202530
lenght
neg pos
020406080100 readability
neg pos
020406080100
informativeness
neg pos
−4−2024
polarity

16. 16!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
16! Results (II)
• Tweets receiving higher
engagement talk about
– Weather / roads and infrastructures /
events / missing persons
– Raise awareness (domestic abuse,
hate crime, modern slavery)
– Tend to mention locations
• Tweets receiving lower
engagement talk about
– Crime updates: such as burglary,
assault or driving under the influence
of alcohol
– Following requests (#ff)
– Advices to stay safe

17. 17!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
17! Results (III)
• Non-corporate accounts
generate in average higher
engagement
– Offer help, ask for help, advise on
local issues, reassure safety, etc.
(#wearehereforyou)
• Three additional ingredients
– They retweet messages about
relevant events and popular users
– They engage closer with the
communities (direct messages and
mentions to citizens)
– They are fun!

18. 18!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
18! Engagement Guidelines
• Focus
– Consider the key goal to achieve / the audience to engage (general public,
local communities, teenagers) & provide a clear message with a concrete set
of actions associated to it
• Be clear
– Complex messages with police jargon are difficult to understand. Messages
should be simple, informative and useful. Use images/videos and humour to
enhance dissemination
• Interact
– Engage with the communities rather than only broadcast. Identify highly
engaging police staff members and community leaders and involve them
• Stay active
– Engagement is a long-term commitment. Accounts active for longer time
receive higher engagement.
• Be respectful
– Reputation and legitimacy are extremely important. Post polite, safe and
respectful content

19. 19!
Society of Evidence Base Policing (SEBP2018) 1st and 2nd March 2018
19! Questions?
Work done by
Miriam Fernandez
Harith Alani Elisabeth Cano
Tom Dickinson!