Social Media & Policing

1. Social Media & Policing Professor Peter Kawalek Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester M15 6PB. peter.kawalek@mbs.ac.uk

2. 2011 • The Arab Spring • Mexico • Slogans & Logos in Spain & UK. • The Ideas/ Theory • The Issues • What to do about the questions

3. 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.

4. Communication is the structure that forms society. Manuel Castells.

5. The “Arab Spring”

6. Tunisia

7. Tunisia

8. Egypt

9. Syria

10. Mexico

11. #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

12. Child Kidnap Rumours

13. CNN Report

14. Slogans & Logos in Spain & UK

17. Cavendish Press

23. Ideas & Theory

24. Transaction Costs • Network Theory • Attention Poverty • Latency & Legitimacy

25. 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

26. Network Theory • Network Theory • Inclusion / Exclusion • Coordination through standards • Assignment of meaning

27. 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

28. 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

29. 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

30. 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?

32. Attention Poverty

33. 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)

34. 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.

35. The Issues

36. 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)

38. People can earn money from You Tube

41. Researching & Defining The Issues.

42. Agenda-setting • Working out what the issues are • Working on solutions, from germination through to practice.

43. Lab • Action Research • Ethnography • Mixed Methods • Police / academics / students /community • mutual learning & unlearning

44. 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.

45. Twitter: @kawalek Facebook: I’m a conscientious objector. Email: peter.kawalek@mbs.ac.uk