2.04 Strategies for effective social media engagement

Academic team: Prof Harith Alani, Dr Miriam Fernandez
Policing partners: Humberside Police, Gloucestershire Police, Dorset Police
Status: Complete

The aim of this project, which builds on previous research conducted through CPRL, is to understand what attracts citizens to engage with social media policing content, from corporate as well as from non-corporate accounts. The proposed approach combines learnings from existing theories and studies on user engagement as well as from the analysis of 1.5 Million posts from 48 corporate and 2,450 non-corporate Twitter police accounts. Results provide police specific guidelines on how to improve communication to increase public engagement and participation

Outputs

TitleOutputs typeLead academicYear
Social media engagementFinal ReportAlani, H2018
Policing engagement via social mediaPresentationFernandez, M2017

News

Welcome Clifford as our new policing professor

Our new Professor of Policing and Research, whose role includes becoming Academic Director of our Centre for Policing Research and Learning (CPRL), is Clifford Stott MBE.


As the Centre’s lead, a significant part of his role will be working with academics across and beyond the Faculty, as well as CPRL’s police force partners, to generate research and learning relevant to theory, policy and practice.

2nd March 2026