Leveraging social media to achieve a community policing agenda

The study shows the priorities that comprise the police agenda, identifies both similarities and differences in what their audiences communicate among themselves about most frequently in the public safety domain relative to the police agenda, and finds evidence of positive response from the public to some of the agenda priorities communicated by the police. Our data also reveal that police are using social media interactively, which could, over time, advance community policing goals. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these findings for law enforcement and community policing and suggests directions for future research on agenda setting in this new media environment.