Policing and Social Media

This book is timely and of major importance given the increasingly central role social media now occupies in global policing, governance, and accountability discourses. […] the book should be of urgent interest to a wide student, academic, and professional readership, including those with a background in policing, science and technology studies, communication studies, cultural studies, criminology, and sociology. -- Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles
Christopher Schneider’s Policing and Social Media: Social Control in an Era of New Media offers an innovative look at how social media has influenced policing practices in Canada.... Schneider’s ground-breaking book […] is the first to trace the origins of social media influence on policing strategies in Canada and raises questions about the long-term implications that social media will have on police conduct and transformations in police work. Schneider’s work is unique in the diversity of approaches [where he] cleverly examines three different social media formats and their impacts on two of Canada’s largest police forces in three concise and critically analyzed chapters. […] Schneider’s research demonstrates the role of social media in challenging the once-enjoyed police monopoly to make claims, define situations, and control narratives. * Surveillance & Society *
In light of the many high-profile and recent police shootings in the United States, and the way that they were framed on YouTube and other social media sites, this book is a significant contribution on the field of policing and information.... [T]his book will be of interest to academics - and people from within police institutions - looking to learn more on social control in an era of new media. * American Review Of Canadian Studies *
In the concise and accessible Policing and Social Media: Social Control in an Era of New Media, Christopher Schneider paints a picture of the management, use, and control of social media by police agencies in Canada.... This book provides important insight into how law enforcement encountered and adopted social media as central to police work… [A] major strength of the work is when Schneider provides examples of original content produced on social media platforms by Facebook users [where he] carefully analyzes troves of content to highlight big-picture cultural meaning… The accessibility and clarity of the book will spark new questions for scholars.... This book is timely and relevant. * Contemporary Sociology *
This is an original and important contribution … this book’s theoretical contributions surely will influence future work across disciplines. Policing and Social Media is essential reading for scholars of media and crime … It surely would also appeal to anyone with broad interests in social control, social change, social institutions, and the sociocultural effects of new media. * Symbolic Interaction *
Schneider is a recognized academic expert on social media, and . . . he has done the Canadian public a great service in this book, which explores the many ways that Canadian law enforcement bodies are using their own social media presence to try to control public perception of the police and of particular stories . . . Schneider has done a fine job with this study, and anyone in Canada who cares about policing, privacy, civil liberties, and personal freedom should read it. * Vancouver Sun *
Written for fellow scholars . . . this evaluation by a Brandon University sociologist of how the social media revolution has affected policing in Canada is surprisingly populist in its framing. * Maclean's Magazine *
Policing and Social Media breaks new ground in the analysis of how technology is changing the public face of police work. * Brandon University News *
Although focused on Canadian policing, I consider this book an excellent foundational text for those interested more broadly in contemporary police communications as well as the changing nature of policing in general. The arguments are persuasive and help to better understand the challenges police face as they enter this social media environment. * Canadian Journal of Communication *
Christopher Schneider’s Policing and Social Media takes the reader deep inside the interplay of social communication and social control. As he carefully documents, new openings for interactive communication are emerging amidst the swirl of today’s social media—but so are new, insidious forms of surveillance and manipulation. An essential work on contemporary policing and contemporary media, Schneider’s book brings critical social analysis to bear on the most immediate of issues. -- Jeff Ferrell, Texas Christian University and University of Kent
Christopher Schneider’s groundbreaking new book takes studies of the complex symbiosis between police and media into the era of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The multiple perspectives of its three case studies reveal how the logic of social media is already transforming police practices, not only creating new challenges for police, but also new openings for social control strategies. -- Aaron Doyle, Carleton University
In this cogent and compact book with its innovative "mediated order" approach to concept and method, Chris Schneider helps us understand the game-changing, barely scratched field of social media and social control. In a world awash, or even drowning, in the rising tides of instantaneous, global social media, his case studies lucidly illustrate that the facts do not speak for themselves. Rather, they are representational resources conditioned by their format in the enduring conflicts over meaning and who gets to define reality. Democratic societies do best with the visibility of open communication processes that can bring accountability. This book is most welcome in helping us understand the processes by which the facts and their print, visual and auditory stories are chosen, culled, invented and spun under the dynamic influences of new information technologies. -- Gary Marx, author of "Windows into the Soul: Surveillance and Society in an Age of Technology"