Protect and Serve with Privacy: Interrogating the Responsibilisation of Policing Professionals in Their Online Lives

• In Event: Policing and Online/Social Behavior

Abstract

Alongside the proliferation of smart devices and social networking platforms, we have observed a rapid expansion of both the practice and study of police sousveillance. Many pages have been devoted to ‘cop-watching’ and resisting police surveillance, while few consider the privacy challenges and online harms policing professionals, and their families experience resulting from their membership of the extended-police family. This paper draws on documentary analysis and individual interviews with police managers (n=51) from four UK police services to argue that the intensification of citizen journalism and its capacity to mobilise public outcry and damage organisational reputations is impacting both the formal and informal internal police governance structures. We demonstrate that responsibilisation of officers for organisational reputations in both their professional and private lives has intensified because of the affordances of digital platforms and officers’ use of them. These shifts have further exacerbated already strained relations between senior leadership and the frontline and have significant implications for officers’ trust in their employers and their approach to policing more generally. We make several recommendations and argue that deemphasising responsibilisation and promoting officer wellbeing is key to supporting future generations of officers with a greater online presence.

Authors

• Shane Horgan, Edinburgh Napier University

• Yen Nee Wong, Edinburgh Napier University

• Elizabeth Aston, Edinburgh Napier University