Crime and Society 2.0: Police and Social Networking

• In Event: 069 - Section on Sociology of Law Paper Session. Promises and Problems of Sociology, Law, and Technology

Abstract

Previous scholarship has examined how the institution of policing has conformed to the principles of media logic including the news media and reality television. While research in response to the growth in the mediation of social life continues to develop, less remains known about this process as it pertains specifically to policing. A basic question becomes: when and how did police become involved in social media? This paper traces this process beginning with police attraction to social media and then illustrates how the logic of these media quickly worked its way into the organizational apparatus of law enforcement. Various social matters have developed on social media. As one might expect, the emergence of crime in these spaces follows, what we might refer to as crime 2.0. Keeping in line with public thinking on police work and the development of crime online (crime 2.0), it stands to reason that police activities would develop and expand online and on social media in response to crime in these spaces. This paper explores the development of this process.

Author

• Christopher J. Schneider, Wilfrid Laurier University