Summary: Robust Citizen Engagement Through Social Media

Executives today operating in large corporations know just how tough it is to get away from network tools like Yammer, SharePoint, etc. Such instruments are currently used in a regular base to cooperate communication, entertain groups, and trace gatherings. Found in an article, social media entrepreneur and political organizer Jeremy Heimans said, “ Social media helps all institutions become transparent and engage in a more participatory dialogue with the stakeholders. Social media and technology have helped political organizations, providing a more democratic mechanism to get people involved” (429Magazine).

Since the up-climb of social media began in 2003, law enforcement has greatly adapted to the social media network in order to better communicate with the public and to improve their protocol. Much of police work is unappreciated and unknown of. Therefore, some departments have taken it upon themselves to educate the public via social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. This is done in order to inform the community of what their department does, and to build confidence and trust towards their agency. Around the country, law enforcement agencies see social media as both beneficial and damaging. Thus, with the awareness that social media is here to stay, law enforcement has chosen to adjust to these social changes and to use them in their benefit.

Moving forward, social media has been a major convenience and reward to virtually everyone. On an individual basis, social media allows friends and family both near and far to communicate with one another. Also, businesses are flourishing through the use of social media. Advertising has never been easier. Horn (2013) states, “Our profession, unlike any time before, is demanding we become social media (…) experts” (1). Horn (2013) also states, “More than half of reporters (55 percent) use Twitter and Facebook to source stories” (1). Social media has greatly benefited business life and personal life.

The use of social media in law enforcement has been on the rise throughout the U.S. over the past few years. According to the LexisNexis 2014 Social Media Use in Law Enforcement report, eight out of every 10 law enforcement professionals use social media as a tool in investigations, and 25 percent use it every day. The use of social media to help obtain probable cause is widely accepted, the survey shows. Three out of four respondents, or 76 percent, said that, when they used social media as probable cause, it has never been challenged. The percentage is down from 87 percent in 2012.

This campaign season, I worked for Bruce Davis. Bruce Davis was the Democratic candidate chosen in the primary to run for House of Representatives in the Thirteen District in North Carolina. This campaign season was not a traditional one in comparison to what I’ve studied of past campaign’s. Our world has changed with the creation of social media and campaign’s have changed with it. In our campaign we had to look harder to find a proper strategy for using social media to are advantage and think outside the box. Bruce Davis chose to give his intern’s and his staff free reign to come up with ideas to move our campaign into modern times. These ideas will be discussed throughout this paper. I will discuss my personal experience, which was an

“Social media makes the community part of the actual crisis communication response. For example…Twitter was used to quickly share initial information and updates during the 2007 and 2008 California wildfires, 2008 Mumbai massacre, 2009 crash of US Airways Flight 1549, 2010 Haiti earthquake, and 2011 Tunisian uprising.” This information, again in Veil’s 2011 article, reinforces the idea of how social media communication is highly beneficial and furthers an individual’s ability to remain informed on current events.

Social media has taken over the modern day world. It has helped us to communicate,

Websites, twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., are examples of social media to be used to disseminate information to the general public. Implementation of a reverse 911 system provided notification of to specific neighborhood areas. Personal visits, town meetings and fliers provide a personal touch when communicating, especially with a neighborhood or the public. The final form of media is news conferences or (need to consider the current form of communication).

The introduction of social media platforms has expedited communication (Ellison & Boyd, 2008). These sites enable individuals to create a personal or professional profile. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram have changed the way people communicate with each other. Lee (2010) noted that social media has come to be vastly popular for common people. This is because it allows individuals to deliver content or interact with it. Many organizations, such as healthcare, higher education, and government agencies utilize social media as a communication tool (Antheunis, Tates, & Nieboer, 2013; Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009). Recently, Cooperative Extension has utilized social media to build relationships with clientele and deliver educational programs, but this utilization is still not on a large scale (Kluchinski, Kinsey, Komar, &

The emic analysis of a social media program provides a baseline understanding of the practical applications of prior research related to government communication. Such a vantage point identifies and expands these attributes and shows their combined influences on social media work activities and organizational learning. For example, the transient Coast Guard culture is being further investigated in an examination of the program’s evolution in the wake of recent personnel and program changes, including the addition of a Coast Guard account on Instagram’s video and photo-sharing social networking site.

Despite the numerous positive roles played by social media in modern policing, there are also related negative roles in the process . The most common problem involved in modern policing is the security threats that are incurred by the officers

The almost omnipresent Internet transforms our lives, connecting us to family, friends, and the world in ways inconceivable only a few years ago. Through social media, we actively participate in creating, editing, and consuming a never-ending stream of data. Private corporations and protagonists of political or social change all vie to reach and engage highly targeted

CNA, a research facility, partnered with the National Emergency Management Association to provide research and information on the public’s expectations about emergency management’s use of social media. Before this research, the data about this connection was only done with case studies and unreliable accounts. CAN used a survey in this research to see how people felt about social media in connection with emergency management. The results found an positive approach. Many people in emergency management agencies, on local and national levels are very familiar with social media. It is usually the larger websites that are more widely known. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, are widely known and publicized. There are however many other social media sites that are not as widely known that are even more useful to nationwide security and communication such as crowdsourcing and Nixle and these are not as widely known (Su, Wardell, & Throkidsen, 2013). So while people in emergency management

Social media further dissolves borders between the uses of propaganda and public information to forward political-strategic goals. For companies, social media is a great way to promote their brand and their products and attract customers. For politicians the same is true, only in their case they are their own brand.

In their article "Social Media and Public Administration: Theoretical Dimensions and Introduction to the Symposium,” published in 2011 in Administrative Theory & Praxis Vol. 33, Iss. 3, pp. 325-340, authors Thomas A. Bryer and Staci M. Zavatarro introduce the rising trend of social media use in public administration, in both government agencies and nonprofits. As public administration scholars and practitioners themselves, the authors sought to analyze these trends further, and to explore more comprehensively how social media technologies are utilized in public organizations, as well as these methods’ outcomes. The article is laid out as follows: First, the authors attempt to define social media; second, they identify common challenges and obstacles that public organizations face when utilizing social media tools ; and finally, they identify areas for future research. The authors hope that ultimately their research will provide assistance to those public administration practitioners interested in successfully utilizing social media.