Policing Engagement via Social Media

Social Media is commonly used by policing organisations to spread the word on crime, weather, missing person, etc. In this work we aim to understand what attracts citizens to engage with social media policing content. To study these engagement dynamics we propose a combination of machine learning and semantic analysis techniques. Our initial research, performed over 3,200 posts from @dorsetpolice Twitter account, shows that writing longer posts, with positive sentiment, and sending them out before 4pm, was found to increase the probability of attracting attention. Additionally, posts about weather, roads and infrastructures, mentioning places, are also more likely to attract attention.