"Police - to Protect and Serve" Online: Factors contributing to Modern Ways of Interaction between Citizens and Law Enforcement Agencies

Web-based communication channels, like social networks, allow a bidirectional interaction between governmental agencies like the police and citizens. The police clearly value the fact that they can reach a vast number of people within a very short time. Existing studies mainly focus on the police’s perspective. However, it is unclear what kinds of obstacles prevent citizens from using these new communication channels to help the police and what factors drive the usage. This study is one of the first to examine factors contributing to online citizen-police interactions. Applying the grounded theory methodology, we propose a model that reflects the following three classes: obstacles, enablers, and attitudes, all of which influence the interaction between state agencies and citizens. On the one hand, our results highlight that the fear of losing anonymity or the image of an omnipresent police can be seen as the main obstacles. On the other hand, improvements regarding the usability like adding a filtering function can increase the willingness to interact with the police on the side of the citizens. However, not all aspects can be influenced. Citizens’ attitudes which explain their personal impetus to engage in such interactions are virtually impossible to be changed by the police.

[1]  Tom R. Tyler,et al.  Legitimacy and Cooperation: Why Do People Help the Police Fight Crime in Their Communities? , 2010 .

[2]  Richard J. Enbody,et al.  Crimeware-as-a-service - A survey of commoditized crimeware in the underground market , 2013, Int. J. Crit. Infrastructure Prot..

[3]  Mark Bedner,et al.  Schutzziele der IT-Sicherheit , 2010, Datenschutz und Datensicherheit - DuD.

[4]  Ines Mergel,et al.  Social media adoption and resulting tactics in the U.S. federal government , 2013, Gov. Inf. Q..

[5]  Jan Van den Bulck,et al.  Media use and the Process-Based Model for Police Cooperation An Integrative Approach towards Explaining Adolescents’ Intentions to Cooperate with the Police , 2014 .

[6]  Louis E. Keith.  Significant predictors of forming police-citizen collaborative partnerships: A secondary data analysis , 2015 .

[7]  Maria Sourbati,et al.  ‘It could be useful, but not for me at the moment’: older people, internet access and e-public service provision , 2009, New Media Soc..

[8]  Lorrie Faith Cranor,et al.  Privacy as part of the app decision-making process , 2013, CHI.

[9]  Dilip K. Das,et al.  Police Web Presence: Engaging with the Digital Frontier , 2016 .

[10]  Alejandro Saez-Martin,et al.  Using social media to enhance citizen engagement with local government: Twitter or Facebook? , 2018, New Media Soc..

[11]  Gabriella Szabó,et al.  The media and attitudes towards crime and the justice system: A qualitative approach , 2011 .

[12]  Paul F. Syverson,et al.  Hiding Routing Information , 1996, Information Hiding.

[13]  Panagiotis Panagiotopoulos,et al.  "5 Days in August" - How London Local Authorities Used Twitter during the 2011 Riots , 2012, EGOV.

[14]  Rony Medaglia,et al.  Learning from E-Government: A Framework and an Agenda for Social Media Research in IS , 2015 .

[15]  Weiguo Fan,et al.  Social Representations of Social Media Use in Government , 2016 .

[16]  Nick Mathewson,et al.  Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router , 2004, USENIX Security Symposium.

[17]  Jan van Dijk,et al.  Channel choice determinants; an exploration of the factors that determine the choice of a service channel in citizen initiated contacts , 2007, DG.O.

[18]  Anselm L. Strauss,et al.  Basics of qualitative research : techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory , 1998 .

[19]  A. Strauss,et al.  The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research aldine de gruyter , 1968 .

[20]  Imrich Chlamtac,et al.  Internet of things: Vision, applications and research challenges , 2012, Ad Hoc Networks.

[21]  Paul T. Jaeger,et al.  The impact of polices on government social media usage: Issues, challenges, and recommendations , 2012, Gov. Inf. Q..

[22]  J. Crump.  What Are the Police Doing on Twitter? Social Media, the Police and the Public , 2011 .

[23]  Katrin Hohl,et al.  Evidencing a ‘Good Practice Model’ of Police Communication: The Impact of Local Policing Newsletters on Public Confidence1 , 2009 .

[24]  Alyce McGovern,et al.  Procedural justice and simulated policing: the medium and the message , 2013 .

[25]  Reijo Savolainen,et al.  Filtering and withdrawing: strategies for coping with information overload in everyday contexts , 2007, J. Inf. Sci..

[26]  Albert Jacob Meijer,et al.  Social media strategies: Understanding the differences between North American police departments , 2013, Gov. Inf. Q..

[27]  Jenny Fleming,et al.  Encouraging public cooperation and support for police , 2008 .

[28]  Wu He,et al.  Working with communities on social media: Varieties in the use of Facebook and Twitter by local police , 2017, Online Inf. Rev..

[29]  Oliver Hinz,et al.  Law Enforcement 2.0 - The Potential And The (Legal) Restrictions Of Facebook Data For Police Tracing And Investigation , 2013, ECIS.

[30]  Gary Madden,et al.  Some Economic and Social Aspects of Residential Internet Use in Australia , 2000 .

[31]  W. Rogers,et al.  The Use of Communication Technologies by Older Adults: Exploring the Benefits from the User's Perspective , 2001 .

[32]  Wolfgang E. Ebbers,et al.  Facts and feelings: The role of rational and irrational factors in citizens' channel choices , 2016, Gov. Inf. Q..

[33]  Jörg Buckmann.  Einstellungssache: Personalgewinnung mit Frechmut und Können , 2013 .

[34]  Christopher D. O’Connor,et al.  The police on Twitter: image management, community building, and implications for policing in Canada , 2017 .

[35]  S. Czaja,et al.  Age differences in attitudes toward computers. , 1998, The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences.

[36]  Gennaro F. Vito,et al.  Criminology: Theory, Research, and Policy , 1993 .

[37]  Zachary P. Perron.  Becoming More Than a Digital Bullhorn: Two Way Engagement on Twitter for Law Enforcement , 2016 .

[38]  Ahmed Elmorshidy.  Applying The Technology Acceptance And Service Quality Models To Live Customer Support Chat For E-Commerce Websites , 2013 .

[39]  Elizabeth A. Stanko,et al.  Influencing Trust and Confidence in the London Metropolitan Police , 2010 .

[40]  Rick Ruddell,et al.  Social media and policing: matching the message to the audience , 2013 .

[41]  Lisa Mahajan-Cusack,et al.  The impact of social media on local government transparency and citizen engagement , 2016 .

[42]  R. Procter,et al.  Reading the riots: what were the police doing on Twitter? , 2013 .

[43]  Willem Jan Pieterson,et al.  The use of service channels by citizens in the Netherlands: implications for multi-channel management , 2008 .

[44]  Fred D. Davis.  Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology , 1989, MIS Q..

[45]  W. Pieterson.  Channel choice : citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy , 2009 .

[46]  Petra Saskia Bayerl,et al.  Social media and the police: tweeting practices of british police forces during the August 2011 riots , 2013, CHI.

[47]  Starr Roxanne Hiltz,et al.  Structuring computer-mediated communication systems to avoid information overload , 1985, CACM.

[48]  V. McIntee,et al.  Police public relations in the age of social media , 2016 .

[49]  David Bawden,et al.  The dark side of information: overload, anxiety and other paradoxes and pathologies , 2009, J. Inf. Sci..

[50]  N. Selwyn,et al.  Older adults' use of information and communications technology in everyday life , 2003, Ageing and Society.

[51]  Matt Blaze,et al.  Key Management in an Encrypting File System , 1994, USENIX Summer.

[52]  Charles P. Pfleeger,et al.  Security in computing , 1988 .