Published June 30, 2022 | Version v1
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TARGETING SOCIALLY VULNERABLE NEIGHBORHOODS WITH POLICE'S SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE - A SOCIAL JUSTICE PERSPECTIVE

  • 1. University of Gothenburg

Description

Research highlights the use of police social media as a powerful tool for enforcing laws and quickly disseminating information to citizens. At the same time, social media is known to be an enabler and mitigator of social justice which requires research attention to inform governmental agencies and provide interventions. The context of our study is the Swedish police's use of Instagram to target socially vulnerable neighborhoods. From a social justice perspective, police’s use of social media should be positively biased toward people in need. Based on a computationally intensive theory construction approach that includes digital trace data of  10 police’s Instagram accounts and qualitative interviews with 10 police officers, this study identifies three strategies that are used by the police on Instagram from a social justice perspective: facilitation of knowledge building, personalization of content, image creation and relationship building. We compare the implementation of those strategies between the accounts targeting socially vulnerable and non-vulnerable neighborhoods and provide insights that the police use of social media is not always positively biased. The police are putting much effort in relationship building by inviting residents of vulnerable areas to participate in crime investigations, enhancing social inclusion. But when the posts are not adapted to residents’ burdens (e.g., language barriers), this possibly leads to undermining a socially just communication. Additional findings are provided and discussed. Our theory stimulates a debate about socially just communication on social media and highlights implications for governmental agencies.

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