CJUS 520 LU Policy Development & Law Enforcement Organizations Research Paper Law enforcement organizations are facing a tremendous problem with social med

CJUS 520 LU Policy Development & Law Enforcement Organizations Research Paper Law enforcement organizations are facing a tremendous problem with social media. On one hand, social media such as Facebook, My Space, and Twitter can be extremely useful for effective and efficient communication. On the other hand, Law Enforcement Executives are constantly facing situations in which employee misconduct is occurring through social media. Police Officers are accessing social media from their workstations and patrol cars during their shifts. Police Officers are posting information that is unbecoming for an officer as well as degrading and disrespectful to the profession. Police unions and police officer organizations such as the Fraternal Order of Police and the PBA are opposed to departmental policies that infringe on police officers’ constitutional rights. How do law enforcement organizations regulate the use of social media? Just about every major law enforcement organization has a Facebook account associated with the organization’s website. Therefore, should law enforcement organizations regulate individual officer’s social media activity? As the policy manager for your law enforcement organization, please research the best practices related to the regulation of police officers’ use of social media and develop a department policy. This research should include interviews with your local law enforcement leaders to determine how they are addressing this issue.5-7 pages not including your title, abstract, and references pages. Current APA format, Times New Roman 12pt Font. Supplemental sources for assistance have been attached. 551381
research-article2014
ARPXXX10.1177/0275074014551381American Review of Public AdministrationMeijer and Torenvlied
Article
Social Media and the New
Organization of Government
Communications: An Empirical
Analysis of Twitter Usage by the
Dutch Police
American Review of Public Administration
2016, Vol. 46(2) 143­–161
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0275074014551381
arp.sagepub.com
Albert Jacob Meijer1 and René Torenvlied2
Abstract
Do social media de-bureaucratize the organization of government communications? Key
features of the bureaucratic ideal-type are centralized and formalized external communications
and disconnection of internal and external communications. Some authors argue that this
organizational model is being replaced by a less bureaucratic model that better fits the
communication demands of the information society. To explore this argument empirically, the
use of twitter by Dutch police departments is investigated through an analysis of 982 accounts
and 22 interviews. The empirical analysis shows that most twitter communication takes place
through decentralized channels. While a minority of police officers use personal names on
twitter, most use their formal identity. Twitter is mostly used for external communication but
the mutual interest in the twitter communications of other police officers is substantial. The
study nuances the idea of transformative change: the old bureaucratic and the new models
manifest themselves in the hybrid organization of social media communications.
Keywords
social media, police, (post) bureaucracy
Introduction
While government communications used to be limited to leaflets and press contacts, government
organizations have now become “communication machines” (Wright, 2001). The Internet is used
for 24/7 interactive communications with outsiders such as clients, citizens, and stakeholders.
The latest addition to the variety of digital communication channels are social media. Twitter,
Facebook, and Google+ enable government organizations to build new communication networks
for interacting with citizens and stakeholders (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010; Mergel, 2013;
Mergel & Bretschneider, 2013). They generate more openness about government activities, create new opportunities for citizens” participation, enable citizens and stakeholders to collaborate
with government, and stimulate processes of innovation in the public sector (Criado,
1Utrecht
University, The Netherlands
of Twente, The Netherlands
2University
Corresponding Author:
Albert Jacob Meijer, Utrecht University, Bijlhouwerstraat 6, Utrecht, 3511 ZC, The Netherlands.
Email: a.j.meijer@uu.nl
144
American Review of Public Administration 46(2)
Sandoval-Almazan, & Gil-Garcia, 2013; Mergel, 2012). The use of social media has attracted the
interest of researchers and, recently, interesting work has been published about a variety of issues:
social media monitoring (Bekkers, Edwards, & de Kool, 2013), social media strategies (Meijer
and Thaens, 2013), drivers and barriers for social media (Zheng, 2013), the use of social media
in crisis management (Chatfield, Scholl, & Brajawidagda, 2013), and their use for communication with citizens (Mossberger, Wu, & Crawford, 2013). These recent studies help us to understand how the new technology is being implemented in government, and to what extent it is
helpful for strengthening government capacities, but fail to show us how government organizations themselves are being reconfigured.
The relation between new media and government communications is of great importance to
understanding current challenges to government bureaucracy (cf. Olsen, 2006). Throughout the
20th century, government organizations have come to organize their communications through a
set of centralized and formal working methods (Yates, 1989). External communication to broad
audiences widely came to be seen as an activity that needs to be controlled, to prevent damage to
the bureaucratic organization (Perrow, 1986; Weber, 1968). This approach to organizing external
government communications, however, may be challenged by new technologies in the information age. Indeed, various authors present post-bureaucratic, leaderless, and networked organizations as the successors of the traditional, bureaucratic organization (Brafman & Beckstrom,
2006; Shirky, 2008). For the public sector, the core argument is that a bureaucratic organization
no longer fits the dynamic and complex nature of the information society and needs to be modernized to retain its effectiveness and legitimacy (Osborne & Plastrik, 1997; Meijer, 2008). This
reconfiguration of organizational structure affects not only internal processes but also the organization of external communication. The argument that the centrally controlled and formal system
of government communications does not fit current social media communications may sound
compelling but it has never been tested or even explored on the basis of empirical research.
As a first step, we need in-depth empirical research to advance our understanding of how the
use of social media challenges the organization of government communications. In this article,
we explore the relation between social media and the organization of government communications by focusing on microblogging by the Dutch police. Microblogging is increasingly seen as a
valuable contribution to strengthening communications between police and citizens (Meijer et
al., 2013). New media, such as twitter, are supposed not only to help the police to communicate
effectively and fast with large groups of citizens but also to facilitate citizen input in police work.
The perceived medium opportunities of twitter induce police departments all around the world to
open twitter accounts. Several studies have investigated the opportunities of twitter in terms of
its contribution to police effectiveness and public trust in the police (Crump, 2011; Heverin &
Zach, 2010). The police are a bureaucratically organized government organization and, therefore,
the appropriate empirical context for exploring changes in the organization of government communications in response of the introduction of new communication technology. We need to be
cautious, however, when interpreting what an analysis of the police means for the diverse group
of government organizations.
The central question in this article is, “Does the use of twitter de-bureaucratize the organization of police communications?” The objective of this article is enhancing our theoretical understanding of the organization of government communications in an information age. The article
will, first, present a theoretical perspective on the bureaucratic and new organization of government communications. The empirical part presents descriptive quantitative data from an investigation of all 982 police twitter accounts in the Netherlands in combination with qualitative
material from 22 interviews with both police officers and communication officers. An analysis of
the empirical data shows that, in this case, social media indeed result in a new organization of
government communication in the sense that decentralization, informality, and connections
between internal and external communications are increasingly important. This change,
Meijer and Torenvlied
145
however, is hybrid rather than transformative: both the bureaucratic and the new model manifest
themselves in social media communications.
Bureaucratic Organization of Government Communications
While the literature on political communication (see Political Communication journal) and the
mediatization of government (Mazzoleni & Schulz, 1999; Schillemans, 2012) is extensive, few
authors explicitly discuss how external government communications are organized. Traditionally,
government communication has been organized in line with the bureaucratic nature of government (Yates, 1989; Meijer, 2008). The bureaucratic organization of government communications
can be regarded as an ideal-type that stresses the regulation of both inward and outward communications by administrative procedures. A bureaucratic mode of organization aims to result in
efficiency, effectiveness, and reliability (Olsen, 2006; Perrow, 1986; Weber, 1968) and the organization of external communication would also need to stand up to these criteria. The basic idea
behind an ideal-type of external government communications is that such communications need
to be connected to the internal bureaucratic organization as to not disrupt it. We have used this
idea to identify three characteristics that are typical to the bureaucratic model of government
communications: centralization, formalization, and boundary creation.
The first feature of this ideal-type for organizing government communications is centralization. Outward communications are to be channeled through a limited set of gatekeepers to ensure
that the external communication can be monitored and controlled by central management
(Bekkers, 1998). Tushman and Katz (1980) conceptualize organizational gatekeeping connecting
internal audiences and external audiences and translating organizational information across communication boundaries (see also Ruth-McSwain, 2011). Street-level bureaucrats can communicate with individual clients (Lipsky, 1980) but communication to broader audiences is subjected
to organizational gatekeeping. Central control is important to prevent communicative risks, such
as damage to the organization’s reputation, the dilution of accountabilities, incorrect communication and a limited operational coordination. Gatekeeping is a response to these risks and aims to
ensure that the information presented to outsiders is correct and prevent that sensitive information is disseminated outside the boundaries of the organization. Inward communications is also
channeled through gatekeepers as to ensure that signals are processed adequately (Bekkers, 1998;
Ruth-McSwain, 2011). The main risk for the organization is that external signals are ignored or
not redirected to the right function within the organization (Deutsch, 1963). Communications
offices, client contact services, emergency rooms, and call centers are examples of a centralization of external communications.
The second feature of the bureaucratic model of government communications is formalization. Formalization in the ideal-typical bureaucracy means that personal matters and execution of
tasks need to be strictly separated (Perrow, 1986; Weber, 1968). In that sense, the idea of formalization is directly connected to a depersonalization of functions: Personal characteristics become
irrelevant to the role in the organization (Kallinikos, 2004). For the organization of government
communications, this means that government officials communicate as officials and not as individual persons. They represent the government organization and they communicate as such. This
means that behind a formal organizational identity such as “helpdesk” there can be different natural persons. This fits Selznick’s (1957) notion of reducing the organizational dependency on
personal characteristics and highlighting organizational features. External communicators, such
as spokespersons, workers at client contact centers, and employees in emergency centers, will
communicate as functionaries and not as individual persons.
The third feature of the ideal-type of government communications is the existence of clear
organizational boundaries (cf. Egeberg, 2003). While most analyses of internal communication
focus on the role of this type of communication in managing the organization (Yates, 1989),
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American Review of Public Administration 46(2)
internal communications are inevitably connected to external communications. The connection
moves in two directions. First, external signals are to be processed internally (Deutsch, 1963).
Components of the organization, or members, may detect external signals that are relevant to the
organization. However, if these signals are not processed internally—through systems of internal
communications—the external signals will not trigger any organizational responses. Second,
external communications need to be informed by knowledge about the internal processes. Streetlevel bureaucrats may communicate directly with individual clients (Lipsky, 1980) but communication to broad audiences is channeled through external communicators. If information from
within the organization is not channeled to external communicators, the organization will not be
able to provide accurate information to external audiences.
The dependency between internal and external communication implies that all organizations
need to develop mechanisms and practices for connecting these two. Bureaucratic organizations
tend to develop centralized and formalized structures to separate internal and external communication in a clear manner. Communications offices have been formed in most large government
organizations to streamline the interface between internal and external communications. In
essence, they act as a “gatekeeper” (Bekkers, 1998) for communication with the outside world.
Previous waves of technological development have, to some extent, challenged this distinction
(Meijer, 2008) but in most organizations the boundary is reproduced in online media; think, for
example, about the distinctive difference between the external website and intranet of
organizations.
The argument can be summarized in the following set of core characteristics of the bureaucratic organization of government communications:
•• Government communications to a general public are centralized and controlled by communication professionals.
•• Government communications are connected to formal positions within the organization:
officials communicate from their position.
•• Internal and external government communications are organized in a separate manner.
Different channels are used for the two spheres of communication.
While these features are still highly relevant in most government organizations, some authors
argue that new technologies challenge the practice of bureaucratically organizing government
communications in all three aspects (Brafman & Beckstrom, 2006; Shirky, 2008). They call for
a new organization of government communications.
Toward a New Organization of Government Communications
As noted above, the bureaucratic model of organizing government communication is firmly
rooted in Weber’s (1968) foundational work on organizational structure. Therefore, any new type
of organization would be regarded as a “post-bureaucratic” model of government communications—although this term is often reserved for the internal communication of government (Huber,
1984; Josserand, Teo, & Clegg, 2006; Powell, 1990). New models sometimes rely on a normative
critique of the bureaucratic model (Clegg & Courpasson, 2004), and often stress instrumental
shortcomings (Maravelias, 2003). A popular model of organizing government communication
that radically departs from Weber’s design principles for organizations has been developed by
Brafman and Beckstrom (2006). They refer to a type of organization reflecting a “starfish” for its
decentralized neural structure. Similarly, Shirky (2008) highlights that new tools—such as social
media—themselves allow for instant group coordination. Therefore, bureaucratic modes of coordination would no longer be needed. While Weber’s bureaucracy was all about stability and
control, these competing organizational models thrive on change and adaptation.
Meijer and Torenvlied
147
We can use these ideas about post-bureaucratic organization to develop a new, post-bureaucratic model of government communications. This model first differs from the bureaucratic
model in its emphasis on decentralization rather than centralization of government communication. The idea that centralization of organizations hampers the production of new ideas and
exchanges about current developments has already been presented by Ullrich and Wieland
(1980). Brafman and Beckstrom (2006) highlight that decentralized organizations are “smarter”
since they use the intelligence that is spread throughout the organization (p. 39). Josserand et al.
(2006) stress that post-bureaucratic organizations are decentralized and rely on cross-cutting
networks of all kinds for more flexible coordination. Maravelias (2003) stresses that a distinguishing characteristic of post-bureaucracy is its decentralization to the level of individuals. This
far reaching decentralization displaces the responsibility for setting limits between professional
and non-professional concerns from the organization to the individual. Hence, government communications will not be centralized in communications offices, or client contact services, but
rather distributed throughout the organization to enable flexible responses and exchanges.
A second difference between the bureaucratic and the new model for the organization of government communications concerns the emphasis on formal instead of personal identities. On the
basis of extensive empirical research in more than 90 different public sector organizations,
Willem and Buelens (2007) conclude that informal coordination strengthens knowledge sharing
between the organization and outsiders. The role of individuals in their study reflects Shirky’s
(2008) model of self-organization. He discusses Wikipedia and highlights that that is an organizational form in which people rather than organizations collaborate to produce services. The
basic premise is that communication requires rich contacts between individuals. These contacts
would entail not only task-related communication but also, according to the bureaucratic model
superfluous, aspects of the specific person such as hobbies, observations, opinions, and so on.
Building upon these notions, a new model for organizing government communications would
imply that people communicate with outsiders as they would with colleagues within an organization rather than as functionaries for the organization.
The third difference between the two models concerns the connection between internal and
external communications. While a clear definition of organizational boundaries lies at the heart
of the bureaucratic model of government communications, the new model highlights the importance of connecting internal and external communications. Boundary spanning by individuals
who are well connected internally and externally is increasingly emphasized as an activity that is
needed to enhance the creativity and performance of organizations (Meier & O’Toole, 2003;
Tushman & Scanlan, 1981; Torenvlied et al., 2013). Brafman and Beckstrom (2006) put the
emphasis on openness as a design principle for organizations and stress that knowledge should
be available to everybody. This idea can be used to formulate a third characteristic of the new
model of organizing government communications: The disconnection between internal and
external communication loses relevance because communication needs to facilitate the exchange
of ideas both within and outside the organization.
The ideal-type of a “new organization of government communications” can be positioned visà-vis the “bureaucratic organization of government communications” (see Table 1).
This research focuses on the issue whether the use of social media results in a transition to a
form that leans more toward new organization of government communications. The theory of
media affordances highlights that media facilitate certain communication practices and, therefore, the availability of new media may result in a change in communication patterns. Sellen and
Harper (2002) explain, “An affordance refers to the fact that the physical properties of an object
make possible different functions for the person perc…
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