Policing and Social Media

Social Control in an Era of New Media

By (author) Christopher J. Schneider Foreword by David L. Altheide

Not available to order

Publication date:

04 April 2016

Length of book:

184 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498533720

This book investigates various public aspects of the management, use, and control of social media by police agencies in Canada. This book aims to illustrate the process by which new information technology—namely, social media—and related changes in communication formats have affected the public face of policing and police work. Schneider argues that police use of social media has altered institutional public police practices in a manner that is consistent with the logic of social media platforms. Policing is changing to include new ways of conditioning the public, cultivating self-promotion, and expanding social control. While each case study presented here focuses on a different social media platform or format, his concern is less with the particular format per se, as these will undoubtedly change, and more with developing suitable analytical and methodological approaches to understanding contemporary policing practices on social media sites.
Christopher Schneider’s Policing and Social Media takes the reader deep inside the interplay of social communication and social control. As he carefully documents, new openings for interactive communication are emerging amidst the swirl of today’s social mediabut so are new, insidious forms of surveillance and manipulation. An essential work on contemporary policing and contemporary media, Schneider’s book brings critical social analysis to bear on the most immediate of issues.