"From Crime to Viral Videos: Investigating Police Management, Use, and Control of Social Media" - Lecture by Dr. Chris Schneider

Dr. Chris Schneider will deliver the Endowed Chair in Criminology and Criminal Justice Lecture on Wednesday, March 20 at 7pm in BMH 101.

He will speak about policing in the age of social media in his talk, "From Crime to Viral Videos: Investigating Police Management, Use, and Control of Social Media."

Dr. Schneider will be discussing his book Policing and Social Media: Social Control in an Era of New Media (Lexington Books | Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). The book aims to better understand and clarify a few recent developments in publics, police image, and police legitimacy in relation to changes advanced by the expansion of social media.

Beyond the promise of effectiveness of the perceived police use of social media, little is known about the impact of social media on policing, including the possible long-term implications that police use of social media may have for police legitimacy. This presentation will explore how social media contribute to some recent changes in police social control efforts including the increased management of risks attributed to social media.

Police are an essential social control agency. Social control is understood as the ability to define a situation. Police provide the authorized definition of given situations especially those situations involving crime (i.e., controlling crime narratives). Social media have changed how definitions are negotiated and accepted (or not) by the public in part due to the circulation of accounts and documents (such as videos) provided online by citizens. This definition process, increasingly, extends to police agencies such as when an intended humorous social media post made by an officer on behalf of a service is subject to reinterpretation resulting in negative publicity online and sometimes in news media. Drawing upon materials from Policing and Social Media, as well as ongoing research projects, Dr. Schneider’s talk will illustrate some of these institutional changes.