A tale of four police twitter accounts

Background
The recent riots and incidents of violent disorder in London and other cities will have far-reaching consequences for public policy, policing tactics and many other areas of life. Big shifts will occur.

I want to focus in on one, quite small, area of change: the deployment of social media in an emergency. As a first step I have looked at some statistics on the twitter accounts of four police forces. There are many caveats to this work and I really don’t want to be seen to be drawing conclusions, just raising interesting observations.

Of course if someone wants to pay me to do a more serious piece of work on this, they have only to contact me.

I’ve looked at the corporate twitter accounts of The Metropolitan Police, West Midlands Police, Greater Manchester Police and West Mercia Police. The first three police forces had to deal with serious incidents of disorder the last one did not. I used the service twittercounter to generate statistics for the number of followers per day and the number of tweets per day between 5th and 14th August inclusive.

Quick reminder of some key dates

• 4th August: Mark Duggan shot dead by police
• 6th August: Large protest at Tottenham Police Station followed by riots in Tottenham.
• 7th August: Riots in several parts of London
• 8th August: Riots in several parts of London, Bristol and in Nottingham
• 9th August: Riots in London, Greater Manchester, West Midlands, Merseyside continue into the morning of 10th August
• 11th August: Situation seems to calm

Metropolitan Police

Orange rhombus followers, blue blobs tweets.

The least active of the twitter accounts I looked at. In fact, as I wrote here, the twitter account made no reference to the disorder until Sunday lunchtime. Followers grew rapidly between 9th August and 11th August and more steadily to 14th August. Followers grew from roughly 27,500 followers to 40,000 by 14th August. Tweet volumes peaked on 9th August when just under 30 tweets were sent.

The account was used to broadcast information about the police position, the number of arrests and to share statements from senior officers.
There were a few dynamic updates of police actions as they happened most notably on 9th August.

“We are responding to disorder in Ealing, Clapham and Peckham. Lewisham appears to be calming down at present.”

“Rumours of violence against mosques in Ilford and Tower Hamlets are untrue. We have had no reported violence against any mosques.”

Were retweeted by over 100 people (according to twitter’s internal system).
The Met Police account didn’t engage in public with individuals (ie there were no @ messages in the timeline)

West Midlands Police

Orange rhombus followers, blue blobs tweets.

A quiet corporate account under normal circumstances the number of tweets spiked sharply on the 9th and remained at a high level for the next three days. Follower numbers also jumped between 8th and 9th and then increased up until the 12th (to stand at a little under 25,000.

This account was also used to broadcast information about the police position etc.
On the 10th the corporate account encouraged people to follow more locally-focused accounts. And retweeted this from South Birmingham Police

“At the Test Match? Fantastic event for Brum, we’re delighted to host the fixture. This event will not be overshadowed by mindless thugs.”

The account virtually never engaged with individuals in public. The bio on the account profile indicates that they won’t.

Greater Manchester Police

Orange rhombus followers, blue blobs tweets.

Tweets from this account leaped up between 10th and 11th August in response to the disorder in Manchester. Follower numbers had increased significantly in advance of this (from around 45,000 on 5th August to around 70,000 on 10th August. They jumped again between 10th and 11th August finally peaking at just under 100,000 followers. By far the most followed of the accounts I looked at.

This account was very different in tone and application. It was much less formal. There was widespread engagement with individuals in the public stream. The account provided live updates on the policing situation even though it was dynamic and kept changing. The huge increase in activity was post riots when the police began to tweet details of those charged (and convicted) of offences related to the disorder. This was controversial and the account engaged with individuals over this in the stream:

@bmckee15 we publish people’s DOBs so that there can be no mis-identification with someone of the same name

Lot of debate about publishing details – courts very clear, justice should be done publicly

On the 13th the account started to invite feedback and provided a commentary on this

“really appreciate constructive comments about consistency of tone etc as we have different tweeters. We will definitely look at this.”

West Mercia Police

Orange rhombus followers, blue blobs tweets.

West Mercia covers a large, fairly rural area (including the area I live in) and a large number of communities who border Birmingham (in North Worcestershire). West Mercia used their account to spread calm and to reassure their citizens. Tweets ramped up from a low of around 10 on 7th August to a peak of 80 on 10th August. Follower numbers saw their biggest jump between 9th and 10th August (from 2,000 to just over 4,000). Follower numbers then grew again to reach around 5,500 by 14th August.

West Mercia had a much easier job, keeping calm and trying to control rumours. The account was handled in a similar way to Greater Manchester, reasonably informal in tone and engaging with individuals in public.

On the 10th persistent rumours circulated that riots were coming to Shrewsbury.

“Again, it appears the #Shrewsbury rumour mill is going into overdrive! We have no incidents to report that would suggest rumours are true.”

An impending EDL March was also causing concern (the March was eventually banned by the Home Secretary and a static protest occurred instead).

“@graemem12 Police will be present in the Wellington and Oakengates area in preparation for any anticipated protests.http://ow.ly/620aE”

“Final tweet of the night – all remains calm across West Mercia. Thanks for your messages and support. We’ll continue to update you tomorrow.”

What does this tell us?
Well I’m wary to draw too many conclusions. I really think we could benefit from a much more comprehensive review of the use of social media across this time period. Many other social media accounts from other cat one responders and from local agencies were active and ultimately we need to be able to assess the outcomes against the actions.

We can see that there is an appetite for receiving information via this channel. In every case twitter follower numbers increased sharply across this time period.

My personal view is that the more informal and engaged approach of Greater Manchester and West Mercia should be the preferred mode. This clearly has resource and training implications. Not just for the staff actually operating the twitter accounts but for the incident commanders who need to understand the way this virtual and ephemeral world interacts with the very real physical world that they are concerned with.

Here I asked if we need new doctrines? I am happy to modify that to stating that we do need new doctrines.

As discussed in the comments here, twitter may be receiving attention from responders to the detriment of other networks such as facebook.

And more than anything we need to learn from this experience.

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