This week Protect Our Police invited Nick Keane to tell us about the ever increasing use of Social Media in the Police World. Here he explains about twitter and how it can improve communication in the Policing World.

 

 Nick Keane: – Is the Digital Engagement Business Advisor for the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) and the view expressed in this blog is his own and not that of the Agency.

 

On Wednesday 13th April the Policy Exchange in London held a Police leadership event where Peter Neyroud, Nick Gargan CEO of the NPIA, Chief Constable Andy Trotter, Lord Bichard and Derek Barnett of the Superintendent’s Association discussed the Neyroud Report on Police Training and Leadership

I attended the event and, with other attendees, reported on the event using the micro blogging site twitter.com. Protect Our Police have kindly invited me to blog about tweeting events and what it means and what issues to bear in mind.

Whether because of people’s changing perceptions about social media or in response to the ongoing national debate around policing, it is evident that police officers in a number of different capacities are starting to use twitter as a tool to engage and discuss policing issues. The Police Federation, Superintendent’s Association and ACPO now have active twitter accounts. Perhaps as a sign of the times two of Wednesday’s panellists Mr Neyroud and Mr Gargan also have accounts. In addition and people who follow me on twitter (@nickkeane) will be aware that over four hundred police officers are using twitter as part of their community engagement processes .

For the full list of UK Cops who tweet go here

As part of this growing appetite for using twitter is the growth in people tweeting significant events, in this case the Policy Exchange meeting, here are a few guidelines of what to think about.

1)   Obviously do people at the event want the discussions tweeted? In the Policy Exchange event this was made evident at the start because the event had a twitter hashtag, this is a word which when preceded by the # sign signifies content. I.e. #police or #leadership or in this case #polfuture this indicates that the organisers of the event are comfortable with people tweeting in the event. In the absence of a hashtag I would speak with the organisers and check that they are happy with the event being reported on twitter, this probably results in an announcement at the commencement of the event that the event will be being tweeted. Finally (and this is the exception rather than the rule) not everything said in a meeting or event is for public dissemination, it could be an issue of privacy or confidentiality, at one event I spoke with a concerned speaker who wanted to be less inhibited in what she said and we agreed that at any time she could signal to me to say “don’t tweet this”. Twitter runs on trust and we complied with that system.  Going back to Wednesday’s event, I tweeted using my laptop, it was evident to all attendees that this was going on and being open and ethical about this goes a long way. I spent a small part of my time talking through this with attendees and people from the panel. Access and consent are so important and that is why this is probably the longest of the guidelines

2)   Who should tweet? What was good about Wednesday was that there was more than one person tweeting, this to me is preferable, the more people tweeting gives the person following from home or work a wider spectrum of opinions about what’s going on. No one tweeting an event is poor, one person tweeting is passable (but asking a lot of that one person), more than one person tweeting “good”

3)   If you’re on twitter and you become aware of a relevant event being live tweeted, notify your followers, or simply RT (Retweet) and posting with the hashtag on.

4)   What to tweet. By and large I avoid commentary and try and capture what was said, not obviously verbatim, but sufficient to capture the intent of the speaker. In my mind, the person quoted can come up to me afterwards and be content with that I have been as accurate as possible in capturing what they said. Commentary can be either helpful or frustrating “Person A is disagreeing with person B” doesn’t tell the listener what that’s about. “Person A says I take a different because of …” Again if the speaker is on twitter (i.e. @pwneyroud) it’s additionally ethical that they can see what you said they said. So as a rule, content first, commentary later.

5)   Questions. Be prepared for this, at the Wednesday event, when the question and answer session took place I tweeted for people following on twitter if they had a question I would try and raise it. I think this caught people unawares but be prepared for these opportunities in the future. From my point of view I will not ask rude or impertinent questions, e.g. “what planet does person A think he lives on?” It won’t get asked and if it did it would devalue the process.

6)   Finally how to follow. These events should have a hashtag, if not someone tweeting will create a hashtag on the spot; good form for other people tweeting the event is to follow this convention, i.e. use the same hashtag. So I’m at “Speak to your managers event,” I’ll be tweeting it as #STYME2011. For the person following on twitter when you see that tweet you can either click on the hashtag, it should be blue and therefore a link, that will take you to a page marked “real results for #styme2011” or you can type the hashtag into the search section on your twitter page, this will alert you as other mentions of the hashtag take place so you can keep up. Alternatively there are applications such as twitterfall which allow you to follow hashtags; this is especially useful when a number of people are tweeting at the same time.

Finally we’ve produced a user friendly guide to police engagement called Engage which people will find useful.

 

Thank you Nick, whether Member of the Public or Police Officer please enage with us or any debate you see on twitter. It is YOUR opportunity to get involved!

 

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