Social Media and Trust in North American Local Government law Enforcement

This paper examines the continuing use of social media by local law enforcement agencies in the United States and Canada as a vehicle to ensure public trust and to establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. It describes the social media response employed by law enforcement agencies in two U.S. and two Canadian cities to significant police incidents, including a terrorist act, an officer death, a sports riot, and a natural disaster. Information was gathered from publicly available sources to develop a social media profile for each police department. Then at least one major event impacting each city was identified by scanning traditional news media and by studying the comments posted to the official police department Facebook page related to that incident. Tweets from the official police department Twitter accounts were captured and a sentiment analysis was performed to determine whether the sentiment expressed was positive or negative during the same timeframe. The content of the messages posted by law enforcement, whether sharing good news or informing citizens of potential or real threats, the content of the tweets by the visitors to the official police department Twitter accounts, and specific community events surrounding noticeable spikes in participation were analyzed. The incidents investigated include the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013 and the flooding that devastated the City of Calgary in June 2013. The contention that the use of social media can increase the level of trust citizens have in local law enforcement is not definitive but is supported by evidence in the form of increased participation on the social media sites reviewed and the positive comments of participants. Public administrators can use lessons learned from these examples to refine their own social media strategies in order to engage and support the public in the event of similar occurrences.