Samenvatting

Community policing is a common strategy in the Dutch police organization: working in a geographically bounded area, in close proximity and engagement with the local population. The use of Twitter by local police-officers is an increasingly popular way of communicating in this context. Prior research has indicated that there is a positive relation between the use of Twitter by the local police officer and citizens’ confidence in the police. But what factors determine this confidence and how can it be strengthened by using Twitter? This article examines the nature of police tweets and shows how tweets can contribute to improving the degree of confidence between citizens and the police. To determine what factors influence confidence we made use of the model of trust and confidence by Jackson and Bradford. This model differentiates between ‘effectiveness’, ‘fairness’, and ‘engagement’. These three factors are used to explore the way tweets might influence confidence in policing. The empirical research included interviews with three police officers who twitter actively, as well as interviews with 30 ‘followers’ living in the neighbourhood where the police officer works. Also an analyses has been carried out of the tweets made by the police officers in one year, 3.506 tweets in total, by categorizing the tweets according to the model of Jackson and Bradford. We conclude that the model of Jackson and Bradford is useful to explore the possible relationship between the use of Twitter and citizens confidence in the police. Using Twitter by the local police officers seems to make a possible contribution to the degree of confidence in the police. Our categorization of Twittermessages allowed us to give practical recommendations to local police officers how to use Twitter in order to improve confidence among citizens. The data also suggest that followers appreciate the fact that local police officers show their knowledge of current affairs in the neighbourhood.