Advertisment

Our police force is weary of social media

A new study shows varying proportions of our police force’s weariness toward social media

author-image
Sonal Desai
New Update
ID

MUMBAI, INDIA: They have cracked the toughest of cases, faced a volley of bullets to protect you from the criminals and street bully, and are proud to be called the tough men and women in uniform.

Advertisment

But mention social media, and the tough exterior is fastly replaced with uneasiness! Yes, the police force in India is fumbling with social media. It is yet to get the maximum comments on its Twitter handle and likes on the Facebook page.

A new study on the social media habits in the police force has revealed that social media handles of almost all state police are unverified.

Some findings:

A startling fact is some forces have shut down the handle without notice while some do not allow citizens to view their posts. “Citizens have no way of ascertaining if the Facebook pages and Twitter accounts are authentic,” according to the study.

Advertisment

For instance, Kolkata Police used @kolkatapolice1 as its handle instead of @kolkatapolice, because it was already taken by an individual. Interestingly, the @kolkatapolice1 handle has now shut down, while @kolkatapolice goes by the name of "Fake Kolkata Police."

Another example is that of Chennai city police (@chennaipolice_ ), a protected account, which means the tweets made by this account are not publicly accessible, essentially defeating the purpose of active dissemination of information to citizens.

The study of the Twitter handles and Facebook pages of Indian state police and traffic departments by Delhi-based Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology.

Advertisment

The institute analyzed 80 such accounts that showed that only the Twitter handles and Facebook pages of Bengaluru city police and Bengaluru traffic police were verified. Online verification, indicated by a blue tick against the name of the profile on Twitter or Facebook, is an authentication mechanism that builds greater trust in the profiles and drives higher traffic to these profiles or pages.

"Today, we believe that online social media is used more for propagation, dissemination of information, advisories, awareness creation, etc. But, it can be very effectively used for crime detection, crime prevention, and investigation, which we see limited currently in the Indian context," said Niharika Sachdeva, PhD research scholar, IIIT-Delhi.

Comparison with the West:

The names and descriptions of these social media accounts are also non-uniform. For example, Facebook pages are named as " Pune Traffic Police", "Chennai City Traffic Police", or "Traffic Police Ludhiana." Some pages mention these as "Government Organizations" and provide a link to the official website, while others do not, making it difficult for people to figure out if this is a genuine account or page, she said.

Advertisment

Twitter handles have a similar story. State-specific Twitter handles of the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation show an almost identical description, verified accounts, and a link to the official website.

For instance, FBI Washington Field's Twitter handle is @FBIWFO, FBI Boston is @FBIBoston, FBI Los Angeles is @FBILosAngeles, and FBI Miami is @FBIMiamiFL. In contrast, the Twitter handle for Delhi Traffic Police is @dtptraffic, Hyderabad traffic police is @HYDTraffic, Bengaluru city traffic police is @blrcitytraffic and so on. Experts suggest a uniform social media strategy. "Given the penetration of online social media in the country, departments should be able to develop a strategy, execute them effectively to reap the benefits of OSM for their needs.

The strategies may be different for different departments. Departments may look at getting close to the citizens, building a community among citizens, use it as a listening tool, said Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, assistant professor at IIIT-D and co-author of the study.

Advertisment

However, all not lost:

On Facebook, the most active state traffic police page was that of Delhi traffic police with over 27,600 posts, followed by traffic police Chandigarh with over 8,100 posts, and Bangalore traffic police with over 7,400 posts.

However, it was Bangalore traffic police's posts that got the maximum number of likes — over 1,286,280 — and more than 159,782 comments.

CIOL believes:

With increasing instances of cybercrime in the country, it is high-time the force pro-actively takes interest in the social media, for many clues lie hidden in the FB, Twitter and other pages.

must-read smac