Police Use of Twitter During a Sporting Mega-Event

• In Event: POL Panel 17. The use of technology in law enforcement: opportunities and challenges

Abstract

There exists a range of sporting mega-event security case studies from respective Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, International Association Football Federation (FIFA) World Cup, and Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Championships. This literature tends to focus on outlining the policing and physical security arrangements at respective Games and the social consequences of these. Two gaps exist within the respective mega-events and police social media literature that our paper attempts to address: first, there are no studies within the mega-event literature that examine police social media use. Second, police social media use is mostly conducted within the context of everyday police work as opposed to the exceptionality of a mega-event.

Our study analyses the combined 400 X (formerly Twitter) posts of 19 social media accounts from police forces and units connected to Glasgow and London before, during, and after the 2020 UEFA Championship in men’s football (‘Euro 2020’). The article makes an empirical contribution to the mega-events and policing literature by identifying that the police used X in five strategic ways: as a form of security spectacle, to demonstrate effective partnership working with other police and non-police agencies, to promote citizen responsibilization, to facilitate public feedback and reporting, and as a form of real-time crowd management. Such findings have important implications for the use of social media by police practitioners at future mega-events, and for football policing more specifically through the inclusion of a template for police social media tactics.

Authors

• Adam Aitken, University of Salford

• Liam Ralph, Northumbria University

• Paul Robinson, Northumbria University