The use of social media by community police forums as a platform to generate crime awareness

Abstract

A Community Police Forum is an ongoing meeting between community members and law enforcement in order to create and maintain a safe living environment for all community members. One of the key purposes of a Community Police Forum is to ensure that community members are alerted to various crimes affecting the community. Employing the use of social media platforms such as Facebook can prove beneficial in a Community Police Forums quest to achieve the above-mentioned purpose of generating crime awareness. The focus of this paper was to analyse secondary data in order to identify whether Community Police Forums within South Africa, specifically Johannesburg, are using Facebook as a platform to generate crime awareness amongst community members. A qualitative-mono method research design was chosen for this study with interpretivism being the philosophical paradigm that governed this study. The sample for this study was chosen based on a purposive approach and content analysis was used to identify the type of content being posted on various Community Police Forum Facebook pages. Descriptive analysis was also used in order to reflect the frequency of posts dedicated to crime awareness. Based on the data analysis outcomes all of the Community Police Forums sampled, at some point of the data collection phase, uploaded content on their Facebook pages alerting community members to various crimes, the frequency of these posts varied from Community Police Forum to Community Police Forum. Not all of the content posted on the Community Police Forum Facebook pages was related directly to crime awareness, rather the posts pertained to other issues such as reminders for meetings and requests for donations. Theoretically, the study contributes to understanding the use of social media, specifically Facebook as a platform to generate crime awareness. Practically the study shows how social media can be used to generate crime awareness. The onus of course being on community members to adopt Facebook as a means to "spread the word" on various crimes that they are aware of.