scholarly journals The visual politics of public police Instagram use in Canada

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110158
Author(s):  
Kevin Walby ◽  
Blair Wilkinson

Public police now use online and social media spaces as forums for communication. Drawing from discourse and semiotic analysis, and contributing to literature on police image management, we analyze police Instagram communications from five Canadian cities. Focusing on public police services’ Instagram posts, which are more indebted to visual communication than Twitter and Facebook, we examine the ways police communications frame community and diversity. Arguing that these communications resemble the fantastical authenticity found in other Instagram communications, we show how police mobilize images of community and diversity on Instagram to create positive affective relations with community. We argue that these communications amplify policing myths and operate to enhance police legitimacy. In the discussion, we assess what our findings mean for literatures on public police social media communications and policing myths.

Author(s):  
Kevin Walby ◽  
Crystal Gumieny

PurposePolice services, police associations and police foundations now engage in philanthropy and these efforts are communicated using social media. This paper examines social media framing of the philanthropic and charitable work of police in Canada.Design/methodology/approachDrawing from discourse and semiotic analyses, the authors examined the ways that police communications frame contributions to charity and community’s well-being. Tweets were analyzed for themes, hashtags and images that conveyed the philanthropic work of police services, police associations as well as police foundations.FindingsThe authors discovered four main forms of framing in these social media communications, focusing on community, diversity, youth and crime prevention. The authors argue that police used these communications as mechanisms to flaunt social capital and to boost perceptions of legitimacy and benevolence.Research limitations/implicationsMore analyses are needed to examine such representations over time and in multiple jurisdictions.Practical implicationsExamining police communications about philanthropy not only reveals insights about the politics of giving but also the political use of social media by police.Originality/valueSocial media is used by organizations to position themselves in social networks. The increased use of social media by police, for promoting philanthropic work, is political in the sense that it aims to bolster a sense of legitimacy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Ruopu Li ◽  
Md Mafuzur Rahaman ◽  
Zhenghong Tang ◽  
Leiming Zhao

Author(s):  
Kaan Varnali ◽  
Evrim Ersoy ◽  
Sezin Gul Tanriverdi ◽  
Elif Terzi

Author(s):  
MD Saiful Alam Chowdhury ◽  
Monira Begum ◽  
Shaolin Shaon

The past decade has seen an armorial growth of the influence of social media on many aspects of people’s lives. Social networking sites, especially Facebook, play a substantial role in framing popular view through its contents. This article explores the impact of visuals, especially photos and videos, published in social media during social movements. Importantly that some visuals received attention in social media during agitations which later got featured or become news in print, electronic and online news portal media as well. Some of the visuals later proved to be edited or fabricated contents which created confusion among participants in this research and beyond. The confusion has contributed to the acceleration or shrinkage of the movement in question in many cases. The center of this article is to examine how social media visuals influence people’s visual communication during social movements. Additionally, it digs out the user’s activity on social media during movements.


Author(s):  
Radomila Soukalová ◽  
Jiří Ježek

This article currently focuses on the problems of university communications with target groups in the Czech Republic. This issue has been chosen with respect to the ongoing demographic crisis causing a decrease in the number of prospective university applicants. The topic reflects new trends in effective communication of university, i.e. social media communications and concentrates on prospective university applicants. The presented study introduces the results of sub-analyses carried out within selected Czech universities. The sub-analyses dealt with the problems of university social media profiles and their conceptuality, approach of individual universities towards profile administration and the importance of involving fans into communications on Czech university profiles. The necessary data have been gained using both primary and secondary research as well as with help of social media monitoring by Newton Media. The study concludes with the identification of common and different attributes of Czech universities´ social media communications and with suggestions as to how to make these communications more effective.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 i (14) ◽  
pp. 68-83
Author(s):  
Nabil Salem ◽  

Qat, Catha edulis has become synonymous with Yemen, as the phenomenon of Qat chewing in Yemen dates back hundreds of years in history. No social, cultural, or political gathering in the afternoon time can do without Qat. Afternoon time becomes the sign of Qat sessions and socialization. Despite Yemen's openness to other cultures and the recent revolution in all kinds of social media, Yemenis do not stop the habit of chewing Qat. The purpose of the present research work is to analyze 'Qat' as a linguistic sign consisting of a signifier and a signified to understand its various social, cultural, and political signifieds that give it the semiotic power to dominate all aspects of life in Yemen and to ground the coinage of many lexical items that are culturally specific to Qat culture and Yemeni dialects. The present paper uses semiotics as a research method in which it adopts Saussure's linguistic model of sign, signifier, and signified and Barthes' concepts of denotation and connotation. Semiotically, this paper shows that the Yemeni people are not addicted to Qat as a drug, as might be assumed by some foreigners who are not familiar with the sign system of Yemeni culture. The Yemeni people are addicted to Qat as a polysemous sign that is associated with values, norms, rituals, enjoyment, relationship, and socialization at the connotative level.


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