Article published In: Narrative Inquiry
Vol. 28:2 (2018) ► pp.280–300
Are you talking to me?
How identity is constructed on police-owned Facebook sites
Published online: 19 October 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.17040.wal
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.17040.wal
Abstract
Police use of social media has increased in the United Kingdom since 2008 (Crump, J. (2011). What are the police doing on Twitter? Social media, the police and the public. Policy and Internet, 3(4), 1–27. ),
yet there has been little qualitative exploration of how police-owned Facebook sites work to shape the identity of forces. This
study explores the action orientation of small stories on the Facebook site of a UK metropolitan police force. The research
considers the collaborative ways in which stories are positioned and constructed collectively by multiple narrators (both formal
police posts, and the commenting public). Given the ability of social media to enact identity through interaction, this research
explores how the identity of the police force is positioned, and repositioned, by social media activity. It concludes that both
the opportunity for dyadic interactions that may underpin effective community policing, and the potential benefits of harnessing
the opportunity for effective identity work, are currently being under utilised on police Facebook sites.
Keywords: identity, positioning, small-stories, police, Facebook, social media
Article outline
- Introduction
- Stories as identity work
- Digital story-telling
- Narrative practice and small stories
- Method
- Description of data set
- Analytical procedure
- Analysis
- 1.Positioning of the characters in the narrative
- 2.The accomplishment of narrating within the interaction
- 3.Speaker positioning within the ongoing talk
- 4.Management of the relations between interactants
- 5.Self-positioning of the interactants with regard to master narratives
- Discussion
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.