In a previous post I questioned the value of a Twittering police department not following its followers back. The response from @ShawneePD (actually the city of Shawnee, Oklahoma‘s Chief Information Officer, Stephen Nolen): most followers deem it too “Big Brother.” Point well made. Especially in light of this article from the U.K. Overwhelmingly positive in…
Category Archives: Critical Incidents
Crowdsourcing crime prevention
“Crowdsourcing” is one of those terms used by social-media insiders that, on its surface, doesn’t mean much to those of us just learning the ropes. When I began to see it repeated on Twitter and in blogs, I had to Google it. What I found: in short, if outsourcing hands off a project to a…
Social preparedness
Controlling public information during a critical incident used to be, if not easy, then at least somewhat predictable. Police and other emergency responders’ relationship with the media could dictate whether reporters transmitted (or did not transmit) the appropriate messages—or rumors. The Internet, and especially the advent of social media, has changed that predictability. The best…
PR lessons learned from BART
Image by Getty Images via Daylife Could the Bay Area Rapid Transit have found a better way to manage the public relations disaster that was the shooting of an unarmed black man? This is up for debate—BART says no, PR professionals interviewed for the Contra Costa Times say yes—but thanks to the proliferation of shooting…