The Metropolitan police is making its first forays into the world of social media. Having set up a Twitter account this week as part of its "charm" offensive ahead of Climate Camp, the force has now hired 6consultancy, a "leading social media monitoring company", which will monitor the web for evidence of crimes and conversations about policing methods. The firm's homepage informs you (in screaming caps) that "People are discussing your brand, product and services online! Are you listening to the conversation? Pick up the online phone!".
More used to searching out consumer reactions on behalf of clients like Kellog's and Dell, it seems 6consultancy will now be playing a role in crime detection whilst helping to re-brand the Met. They will monitor blogs, as well as sites like Twitter and Facebook as part of an attempt to understand why police tactics are frequently percieved in such a bad light. Presumably this will include blogs like mine yesterday expressing scepticism at the news of a change in the Met's approach to policing protest which seemed exactly the kind of clever story these slick PR operations are designed to produce.
Can it work? As we know, social media works best when people use it to interact and engage, so it'll be interesting to see if Met commanders start responding to their many online critics on hostile turf. I look forward to the first discussion in the OK comments thread. "Lurking" too could be of benefit so long as it's done in the spirit of listening to criticism and addresing concerns, rather than as an exercise in producing better spin.
The ever instructive PRWeek has the full story, including this wonderfully evocative quote from an "insider" who describes the crime monitoring aspect of the project: "If someone blogs saying "there's a little bit of a riot going on down the street from me", it [the Met] will be able to respond that bit faster.' How this'll work in practice - even if it is just a "little bit" of a riot that's being blogged about - remains to be seen, but for now let us say "Hi" to 6consultancy and "congratulations on your juicy new contract!"
