"I Can Haz Applicants": An Analysis of Police Recruitment and Marketing Through Social Media

<p>In recent decades, the Internet has flourished with the advancement of social media: apps, blogs, social networking, multimedia sources, podcasts, and more. Consequently, the Millennial Generation has grown up immersed in both the Internet and social media networks differently than previous generations. Due to the rapid expansion of social media outlets and their effects on future employees, police departments must consider their agency “brand” and how effectively they market their departments to this generation for the purpose of recruitment both on the Internet and with social media platforms.</p> <p>This research analysis employed a netnography to examine 500 police websites and their additional social media presence. In general, this study found police departments are not using websites or social media as recruitment tools. An agency’s size, budget, and having a departmental website are predictors of total social media recruitment. Further, those elements influence a jurisdictional websites online effectiveness, or overall quality, but do not impact departmental websites effectiveness because they are already of a high quality. This analysis supports the idea that police departments generally are not maintaining an online presence or actively recruiting online.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Criminal Justice

Year dc:date.available

2016

Author dc:creator

• Helldorfer, Kelly Lee

Contributors dc:contributor

• Charles Scheer
• Joshua Hill
• Thomas Panko

• netnography
• branding
• police recruitment
• social media
• Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Marketing

Repository record dc:identifier

https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/266

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:aquila.usm.edu:masters_theses-1290