Routine and Emergency Communications: Police Tweets and Community Responses

Social media facilitates emergency management agency interactions with the community by disseminating and gathering information and connecting with audiences. This study seeks to understand actual practices of these agencies, moving beyond existing case study approaches, single incidents, and short time periods. It analyzes tweets of five local police departments and responses of their communities during routine and urgent situations. Police mainly used Twitter as an information broadcasting tool, although frequency of use varied by department; followers disseminated urgent messages more than non-urgent messages, particularly informational and assistance seeking communications. Level of police Twitter activity and urgency of the situation do not impact follower network size, only population and number of existing followers. By identifying patterns in the purpose and function of posts and retweets the study contributes to theories about crisis and non-crisis communication and helps develop best practices of social media communication by emergency management agencies.