Social media and border security: Twitter use by migration policing agencies

ABSTRACT

Social media are transforming public communication and state-society relations, dynamics distinctly visible in the domains of policing and order maintenance. Despite growing research on this relationship, scholarship has adopted an internalist optic, privileging social media use by domestic law enforcement. Using an original data set, this paper broadens the scale of analysis to consider Twitter usage by federal agencies tasked with border security and migration policing in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Despite new technologies’ transformational potential, its findings suggest Twitter is overwhelmingly employed for the conventional purposes of broadcasting information, managing impressions, and enlisting public assistance. Message themes linked with greater user responsiveness are also identified. The deeper implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• border security
• Canada
• impression management
• migration control
• organisational communication
• policing
• responsibilisation
• social media
• Twitter
• United States

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 One recent survey found 96 per cent of departments have incorporated social media into their daily operations (IACP 2016).

2 Based on web searches conducted in June 2017, over 85 per cent of agencies in OECD countries maintain accounts on at least one major platform (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube).

3 Here, broad distinctions concerning message content (public relations, requests for assistance etc.) were retained, while thematic sub-categories were refined to accommodate border security’s distinctive contours. For instance, traffic reports, a common theme of messages from municipal police services, were not present in this study’s sample. Conversely, several issues unique to border policing (e.g. deportations, customs procedures etc.) necessitated the expansion of existing schema.

4 For instance, messages that include images of successful enforcement and, thus, convey authority and effectiveness may also include jokes and folk expressions. In such cases, tweets were coded expressive.

5 The coders consisted of advanced undergraduate students who had successfully completed coursework on content analysis and related research methods at the author’s home institution.

6 Given that users from anywhere in the world can follow the agencies’ accounts, such adjustments are admittedly imperfect. Nonetheless, utilising geographic information provided in users’ biographies, a quick survey of each agencies’ followers reveals they are overwhelmingly located within the country in question.

7 The screennames of ordinary users have been removed to ensure anonymity.