Police Communication and Citizen Initiatives on Web 2.0

This research provides an exploratory overview of the connection between the police, citizens participating in crowd-sourced policing and/or digital vigilantism on Web 2.0 and the concept of visibility in the context of the Netherlands. These concepts – policing, citizen policing, and visibility – can be considered as interwoven, however, in which ways has remained unclear so far. Based on the idea that the online world provides new effortless ways of communication and thereby stimulates citizen activities such as digital vigilantism and crowd-sourced policing, this thesis looked into how the police, an organization that only recently embraced the potential of Web 2.0, responded to this development in the Netherlands, and how this interaction and the activities by each group have impacted the social visibility of the police, these citizens, as well as that of suspects and/or missing persons. The central question for this research therefore was: In which ways do citizens initiatives – such as crowd-sourced policing and digital vigilantism – and the police influence each other’s actions as well as the social visibility of the police, suspects and/or missing persons, and citizens themselves, through their Web 2.0 communication? Data gathering through qualitative interviews with six Rotterdam police representatives as well as four citizens involved in crowd-sourced policing and thematic analysis of this data led to four main themes, namely Web 2.0, police communication, citizen participation, and visibility. The themes confirmed that Web 2.0 stimulated citizen’s willingness to help out the police, either by responding to their call for help or starting a supplementary action themselves, while at the same time showing that it has led to an increase in the police’s willingness to share information and ask citizens for help. Due to this increase in deliberate police communication as well as in citizen actions due to the lack of effort and time it requires, the police and suspects and/or missing persons have moreover become more visible as information on these groups has increased, is visible on several platforms, and is shared more often. Additionally, activities on Web 2.0 by citizens have also increased the visibility of these citizens despite the possibility of anonymity.