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The chapter addresses the question of how crisis and emergency communicators in the justice (police) and health sector in Norway reflect on their use – or lack of use – of social media during the terror crisis on 22 July 2011. We examine how these communicators in the years following the crisis have developed their use of social media to optimise their and the public’s awareness of similar crises. Our semi-structured interviews with key emergency managers and responders display how the terrorist-induced crisis in 2011 was a wake-up call for communicators in the police and the health sector. They reflect on the significance, strengths and weaknesses of social media in the management of crises such as this one.

The research aim of this article is to generate novel insights into how public sector organizations (PSOs) strategically communicate with the public about critical issues on social media. To this end, the study explores the public's experiences of the Swedish Police's sense of safety communication on Instagram in the third largest city in Sweden, where the lack of a sense of public safety is a main societal challenge.

The research was designed as a case study employing photo-elicitation interviews as a method to collect the empirical material. A phenomenography approach was used to analyze public experiences of the Swedish Police's Instagram communication in Malmö, Sweden.

Findings show that the police's strategic communication of safety on Instagram is experienced along the dimensions of a sense of protection, a sense of proximity and a sense of ambiguity. Taken together, these dimensions broaden and develop the knowledge of what communicating a sense of safety in the public sphere entails.

This study adds to previous research on strategic communication in public sector organizations by demonstrating what strategic communication accomplishes at the receiving end outside of the organization.

This paper aims to explore police perspectives on community engagement strategies within the context of crime prevention in South Africa, focusing on Johannesburg metropolitan police stations. The study’s objective is to scrutinise the effectiveness and challenges of community policing strategies.

Through a qualitative research approach, this study conducted unstructured interviews with station commanders and visible policing officers across 10 Johannesburg metropolitan police stations.

The findings reveal that community policing strategies, such as community–policing forums, sector policing, street patrollers and social media utilisation, can effectively engage communities as partners in crime prevention. However, certain challenges such as resource limitations and difficulties in policing-specific regions, were also identified.

This study contributes to the broader understanding of community–policing partnerships and the practical implications of community–policing strategies in South Africa, suggesting areas for improvement and adaptation to the unique South African context. This knowledge can help optimise efforts to foster stronger relationships between police and communities, bolster public trust and ultimately improve crime prevention outcomes.

This chapter argues that the Americanisation of online policing has questionable impacts in Australian prosecutions involving drugs obtained and distributed through dark web cryptomarkets. The authors describe several Australian prosecutions of mid- and low-level dealers who have accessed drugs through the dark web and contrast these with the United States (US) case against the cryptomarket, AlphaBay. The discussion in this study emphasises how Australian police and courts view the relative weight of dark web activity associated with the domestic and transnational supply of illicit drugs that result in formal prosecutions. The authors suggest that large-scale forms of online and dark web police surveillance undertaken by US enforcement agencies reflect Ethan Nadelmann’s (Cops across borders: the internationalization of US criminal law enforcement, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993) thesis on the Americanisation of global policing through transnational communications networks. The authors then explain how key elements of transnational dark web drug supply appear to have a marginal bearing on criminal investigations into low- and mid-level traffickers in Australia, which rely on conventional surveillance tactics to identify clandestine mail pickups, physical distribution methods, and irregular money trails. However, the authors then illustrate how the Americanisation of online policing that targets high-level entrepreneurs and seeks to dismantle or eliminate dark web cryptomarkets has important implications on Australian reforms aimed at enhancing online surveillance powers to target a range of crimes that are often wrongly associated with illicit drug cryptomarkets. The authors conclude by demonstrating how intensive dark web surveillance has limited direct impact on routine drug policing in Australia, with dark web communications simply another medium for facilitating the physical detection of illicit transnational drug transactions.

Law enforcement agencies and police officers' efforts were crucial to oversee the public health measures and legal regulations introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study had two objectives: to examine the strategies implemented by law enforcement agencies in Catalonia (Spain) to monitor the pandemic and to explore the adverse working conditions of police officers and their personal difficulties during the state of alarm.

A total of 96 experienced police officers completed a closed-ended, anonymous online survey. In addition, complementary information was collected about the management of law enforcement agencies through open interviews. A descriptive analysis was carried out and the association between variables was explored.

In general terms, law enforcement agencies managed the uncertainty of the situation, with a focus on official information and communication channels between officers. However, many difficulties were reported by the police officers, such us inconsistency between rules, lack of preventive material or changes in work schedules. Besides, the officers' main concern, beyond the emotional impact suffered during this period, was the possibility of being infected or infecting others.

The congruence between the job requirements and resources, as well as the increase of communication channels during situations of high risk are important variables to assure good job development and personal satisfaction of police officers.

To the knowledge of the authors, at the time of writing this paper, this is the first study in Spain to explore the management of law enforcement agencies and police officers' personal experiences during the Covid-19.

This article aims to (1) increase the knowledge of how coworkers experience voicing the organization on external social media and (2) deepen and nuance the knowledge of the sources of voice control involved in such communication processes. The study helps understand coworker voicing on social media as situated identity expressions through which coworkers negotiate and contest the organizational identity, thereby co-constituting a polyphonic organization.

The study draws upon a constitutive perspective on communication and a communication-centered perspective on identity and organizational identification to investigate the voicing of organizational members of the Swedish Police Force on social media. The article is based on a qualitative study where interviews with police officers and communication professionals at the Swedish Police Authority constitute the main empirical material. A content analysis of selected social media accounts provided important background information to the interviews and enriched the understanding of coworker voice.

This analysis shows that coworkers voice the organization differently. Furthermore, the study of how coworkers experience this voicing indicates that these variations in how coworkers voice the organization depend on how strongly they identify or disidentify with organizational identity and image expressions voiced by significant others. Based on the analysis, this study presents four voice positions highlighting coworkers' varying degrees of identification/disidentification when voicing their organization on social media and reflecting upon their experiences of voicing. Furthermore, the analysis also demonstrates four sources of voice control: (1) management, (2) colleagues, (3) significant non-members and (4) the status and position of the coworker's voice. These four sources of voice control influence coworkers' voices on social media.

This study also contributes with practical implications, for example that the traditional idea of monophonic organizations must be revised and also embrace a polyphonic, bottom-up approach to strengthening internal trust and organizational identity. This comes naturally with the price of less control and predictability by management but with the benefits of increased coworker engagement and pride.

This study contributes new knowledge and a nuanced understanding of coworker voice on social media and the sources of control that influence coworkers' voices.

This paper aims to critically evaluate contemporary Irish police practice, with an emphasis on emergent procedural innovations, in light of the needs of suspects with intellectual disabilities.

A review of published prevalence data in respect of people with intellectual disabilities in the Irish criminal justice system, of the Irish legal and policy landscape and the results of a recent empirical inquiry are used in critical evaluation.

In line with extant international research, the article identifies three sites of concern with respect to the protocols that exist within An Garda Síochána for identifying and responding to intellectual disability, including: (1) barriers to communication; (2) a need to build awareness and skills for police and persons with intellectual disabilities; and (3) a need for institutional change to secure equal access to justice for people with intellectual disabilities. Progress is being made at a systems level towards a human rights approach in Irish policing.

In representing the first international analysis of its kind, the article locates the barriers confronting suspects with intellectual disabilities in Ireland within a discourse that is sensitive to ongoing research-led, procedural reforms within An Garda Síochána (Ireland's national police service). Owing to the universalised nature of these barriers across policing systems internationally, the format of these reforms from this will be of relevance to many other policing states, in particular the 162 other signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities.

This study aims to examine how subgroups within a cohort of Swedish police students value different types of curricula content (i.e. new competencies versus enduring ones) in the context of the currently transforming landscape of basic police training.

Drawing on a Swedish national survey (N = 369), the study examined variations in how students value new versus enduring police curricula content based on sociodemographic factors. Specifically, factors such as student age and gender and the institutional arrangements of education were tested using an independent t test.

The study identified differences in values based on gender. Female students valued competencies such as communication, flexibility, diversity and decisiveness as more important in an educational setting than did males. Fewer differences were found in relation to institutional arrangement, and in-house students valued flexibility and communication skill as more important for educational curricula compared to university-based students. No differences were found in relation to age.

This study adds knowledge to the question of how changes in occupational education policy develop in practice. More specifically, the study explored how students in educational programmes value new versus enduring competencies and whether differences can be identified based on sociodemographic factors. These questions are important because they expose sociodemographic conditions that influence how students value policy-driven skills versus enduring ones.