A study of the Twitter handles and Facebook pages of Indian state police and traffic departments by Delhi-based Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology shows that almost all are unverified, some have shut down without notice while some do not allow citizens to view their posts.
The study, which analysed the level of engagement and response on social media discussions between police and citizens to address safety concerns in day-today policing needs, shows that in some cases, citizens have little or no way of ascertaining if the Facebook pages and, or, Twitter accounts are authentic, impacting the level of engagement and trust.
An analysis of nearly 80 such accounts showed that only the Twitter handles and Facebook pages of Bengaluru City Police and Bengaluru Traffic Police were verified. Online verification, indicated by a blue tick against the name of the profile on Twitter or Facebook, is an authentication mechanism that builds greater trust in the profiles and drives higher traffic to these profiles or pages.
Kolkata Police used @kolkatapolice1 as its handle instead of @kolkatapolice, because it was already taken by an individual. Interestingly, the @kolkatapolice1 handle has now shut down, while @kolkatapolice goes by the name of "Fake Kolkata Police".
Another example is that of Chennai City Police (@chennaipolice_ ), a protected account, which means the tweets made by this account are not publicly accessible, essentially defeating the purpose of active dissemination of information to citizens.
"Today, we believe that online social media is used more for propagation, dissemination of information, advisories, awareness creation, etc. But, it can be very effectively used for crime detection, crime prevention, and investigation, which we see limited currently in the Indian context," said Niharika Sachdeva, PhD research scholar at IIIT-Delhi.
The names and descriptions of these social media accounts are also non-uniform. For example, Facebook pages are named as "Pune Traffic Police", "Chennai City Traffic Police", or "Traffic Police Ludhiana". Some pages mention these as "Government Organisations" and provide a link to the official website, while others do not, making it difficult for people to figure out if this is a genuine account or page.
Twitter handles have a similar story. State-specific Twitter handles of the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation show an almost identical description, verified accounts, and a link to the official website.
For instance, FBI Washington Field’s Twitter handle is @FBIWFO, FBI Boston is @FBIBoston, FBI Los Angeles is @FBILosAngeles, and FBI Miami is @FBIMiamiFL.
In contrast, the Twitter handle for Delhi Traffic Police is @dtptraffic, Hyderabad Traffic Police is @HYDTraffic, Bengaluru City Traffic police is @blrcitytraffic and so on. Experts suggest a uniform social media strategy.
"Given the penetration of online social media in the country, departments should be able to develop a strategy, execute them effectively to reap the benefits of OSM for their needs. The strategies may be different for different departments. Departments may look at "getting close" to the citizens, "building a community" among citizens, use it as a "listening" tool," said Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, assistant professor at IIIT-D and co-author of the study.
On Facebook, the most active state traffic police page was that of Delhi Traffic Police with over 27,600 posts, followed by Traffic Police Chandigarh with over 8,100 posts, and Bangalore Traffic Police with over 7,400 posts.
However, it was Bangalore Traffic Police’s posts that got the maximum number of likes - over 1,286,280 - and more than 159,782 comments.