Abstract
Public police now use online and social media spaces as forums for communication. Drawing from discourse and semiotic analysis, and contributing to literature on police image management, we analyze police Instagram communications from five Canadian cities. Focusing on public police services' Instagram posts, which are more indebted to visual communication than Twitter and Facebook, we examine the ways police communications frame community and diversity. Arguing that these communications resemble the fantastical authenticity found in other Instagram communications, we show how police mobilize images of community and diversity on Instagram to create positive affective relations with community. We argue that these communications amplify policing myths and operate to enhance police legitimacy. In the discussion, we assess what our findings mean for literatures on public police social media communications and policing myths.
Highlights
Police communications are changing as technology advances and more questions are raised about police authority (Ellis, 2020; Lee and McGovern, 2013; Schneider, 2016; Wood, 2020)
Focusing on public police services’ Instagram posts, which are more indebted to visual communication than Twitter or Facebook, we do so by examining the discursive tropes conveyed in these communications and the semiotic positioning of police in relation to community and diversity
Our data suggest that police services are using Instagram to curate narratives about their community focus and embracing of diversity
Summary
The diverse uses of social media by police (Hu et al, 2018), and the feedback loops that can exist between social media use and police practices (Schneider, 2016). Social media allows its users to “blur the lines between offline and online, fact and fiction, trust and deception, authenticity and fantasy” (Hurley, 2019: 13). Applying this idea in the criminal justice realm, the idea of fantastical authenticity lends itself to analysis of how police curate mythical images of themselves to boost their own legitimacy (Phillips, 2016). We argue that the police communications specialists responsible for these communications strategically deploy myth and silence to construct a fantastically authentic version of their services and by extension boost their legitimacy by projecting to the public they are acting in socially acceptable and beneficial ways (Mawby, 2013; Wood, 2020). We assess what our findings mean for understanding public police social media communications and policing myths
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