The Use of Twitter by Police Officers in Urban and Rural Contexts in Sweden

• Author: Reka Solymosi,Oskar Müller,Vania Ceccato
• DOI: 10.1177/10575677211041926
• Date: 01 December 2021
• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

The Use of Twitter by Police

Off‌icers in Urban and Rural

Contexts in Sweden

Vania Ceccato

1

, Reka Solymosi

2

, and

Oskar Müller

1

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate the nature of information sharing via Twitter by police off‌i-

cers. We examine the content of Tweets in urban and rural contexts using a sample of 20 police-

related Twitter accounts, comparing off‌icial and personal accounts active in Southern Sweden.

Exploratory data analysis and in-depth content analysis of a sample of Tweets compose the under-

lying methodology. We f‌ind a distinct pattern of consistency in the content of the information

shared via the off‌icial police accounts compared to the personal accounts, regardless of if they

are from urban or rural areas. However, some urban–rural differences were observed between off‌i-

cial and personal accounts regarding public engagement, operationalized as likes and Retweets. The

study calls for a discussion of new models of police engagement using social media by a society that

is increasingly shaped by the internet.

Keywords

twitter, community policing, rural areas, social media engagement, internet

Introduction

Police agencies around the world are active on social media platforms (Crump, 2011; Dai et al.,

2017; Meijer & Torenvlied, 2014; Schneider & Altheide, 2016). Social media may assist police with

operational tasks, such as criminal investigations, intelligence, and crowd control. It offers a plat form

for communication, where police engage and interact with the general public (Dekker et al., 2020).

Social media also offers a platform for individual police off‌icers to engage with diverse audiences at

an unprecedented scale.

1

Department of Urban Planning and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

2

School of Social Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

Corresponding Author:

Vania Ceccato, Department of Urban Planning and Environment,KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Teknikringen 10 A, 100

44 Stockholm, Sweden.

Email: vania.ceccato@abe.kth.se

Article

International Criminal Justice Review

2021, Vol. 31(4) 456-476

© 2021 Georgia State University

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/10575677211041926

journals.sagepub.com/home/icj

Communication via social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have also become much

more than a source of information for the public (Dai et al., 2017). When engaging with such com-

munication channels, individuals, and organizations alike present particular impressions of them-

selves. Through content posted on social media platforms, they build “exhibitions”of themselves,

and their audiences interpret and engage with these impressions (Hogan, 2010), which affect

public perception of the police. This is true both at the organizational level, and for individuals

who publicly identify themselves as part of the police organization. Content from off‌icial, organiza-

tional accounts is seen to provide a source to verify the legitimacy of information, and even a source

of emotional comfort (Bosco, 2007; Helsloot & Ruitenberg, 2004; Jasper, 1998; Shklovski et al.,

2010). And off-duty Tweeting from personal accounts helps an off‌icer better delineate the individual

from the institution, a strategy that “diminishes the appearance of authoritarian relations traditionally

associated with police”(Schneider & Altheide, 2016, p. 129), which is fundamental for police legit-

imacy in community policing frameworks (Grimmelikhuijsen & Meijer, 2015).

The process by which members of the public make sense of information around them relating to

crime is termed as “crime talk”(Scott et al., 2012). As we spend more and more of our lives online,

“crime talk”has shifted to these spaces, including social media platforms. Therefore, as people make

use of these exhibitions to engage in crime talk, and to form their impressions of the police, it is vital

that we understand how police present themselves on social media platforms, and how the public

engages with these exhibitions. Of special interest is how these exhibitions may differ between

urban and rural contexts.

Internationally, those living in rural areas use the internet less than their urban counterparts

(Berner et al., 2015), but in Sweden, the pattern of internet use is more complex. For example,

the use of social media is evenly distributed between urban (84%) and rural (80%) areas but there

are differences in platform use by age and gender. For instance, Twitter has mostly male, urban

users and a majority is in the younger age group 16–25 years (Internetstiftelsen, 2019). Note that

the proportion of the population aged 65 and older is signif‌icantly higher in rural municipalities

(SCB - Statistics Sweden, 2021), which may indicate differences in the barriers to internet use.

Therefore, a focus on rural areas is important because:

(a) these areas are often taken for granted as free-of-crime places (Yarwood & Gardner, 2000);

(b) the physical presence of the police force is not always a guarantee to those living in rural areas

(Stassen & Ceccato, 2021);

(c) social media can play an important role because of the physical isolation and remoteness of

certain areas (Ceccato & Dolmen, 2011); and

(d) rural areas offer a number of barriers to the use of social media, such as unequal access to digital

infrastructure that exacerbates differences in socio-demographic composition (Park, 2017). For

example, in Swedish rural areas, the population composition (e.g., older adults) is less likely to

engage with social media (Berner et al., 2015).

The way in which the police present themselves may also differ in rural contexts, as well as the

manner in which populations engage with these impressions. Therefore, the aim of this article is

to investigate the nature of information sharing on Twitter by police off‌icers and understand how

their exhibitions align with off‌icial guidelines. We explore Tweets of the off‌icial police accounts

in terms of content of the information shared in comparison with the personal police accounts,

namely individual police off‌icers with personal Twitter accounts identifying themselves as police

off‌icers. The off‌icial police accounts are updated by police off‌icers as part of their duties, whereas

the personal ones are updated by police off‌icers on a sporadic, voluntary basis.

In this study, we present a systematic approach to searching, inclusion, and data extraction from

Tweets made by police accounts. In the resulting sample, we explore potential differences between

Ceccato et al. 457