The Social Media Age of Technology

Facebook and other similar social media outlets, have provided everyone with a fantastic opportunity to engage, publicly or privately, with one another in real time.

Sadly this week certain individuals tried to use this forum for sinister means to publish information and images of police officers, placing them at potential risk. This is absolutely unacceptable and I would encourage anyone who identifies social media sites or posts that place anyone at risk to report this immediately. We will certainly not be deterred from providing a police service by the placing of images or abusive comments on Facebook.

The benefits of Facebook are very clear. Your Police Service has grasped this opportunity and is now running nine Facebook pages and four Twitter accounts throughout Northern Ireland. Not only does this provide us with an opportunity to provide you with information, but it also has provided excellent opportunities for individuals to advise us about what is important, what matters most to local communities, and to debate wider policing issues. I personally follow a number of the Police Service sites and I am very encouraged by the contributions which are being made and the engagement which regularly happens on these sites.

Clearly on occasions we have to step in and remove certain inappropriate content, and no doubt this is no different from other personal and business users. The responsibility for the content each person posts is their own, and recent events have shown how irresponsible comments can become the subject of criminal proceedings. That is not to say we will remove all negative comments. It is right that people have an opportunity to voice their views even if these may be critical of police actions. We can learn a lot from constructive criticism, and this is to be actively encouraged.

We hope over the next few months to make the Police Service of Northern Ireland even more accessible to social media users and I encourage those of you who already live or work in the areas where we currently have sites to follow and engage with us in this way. The feedback to date has been extremely positive and we have been greatly encouraged by the support which we have received.

But if you haven't quite caught the 'social media' bug yet, don't be concerned. This was always intended to be in addition to and not instead of the more traditional means of face to face engagement of visible, accessible and familiar police officers on patrol. And even though many thousands of people in Northern Ireland and beyond follow Facebook - and it's a great way to keep in touch - nothing beats an old fashioned face to face chat.