This Friday 22 March 2013 marks the first global police Tweetathon organised by Lauri Stevens (@lawscomm) over at ConnectedCops.
Using Tweetathons to raise public awareness
UK police forces have a tradition of using Tweetathons to raise public awareness about what the police do.
Greater Manchester were the first British force to try this approach, tweeting about every call they received over a 24 hour period in October 2010.
Last December (2012) Sussex Police ran a Tweetathon dedicated to the issue of domestic violence.
They used the Tweetathon as a way of highlighting the issue, and encouraging victims to come forward and report crimes.
Lots of other police forces across the world have used a similar approach including police in Vancouver and Zurich.
The global Tweetathon
As of yesterday afternoon ago, there were over 220 police forces or individual iPlods signed up for the tweetathon which will be using the hashtag #POLTWT.
Although most are based in the United States, there are plenty of UK, European, Australian and New Zealand forces signed up.
Here’s a map of the world with participating police forces.
The tweetathon will be a great opportunity for anyone interested in policing to compare different approaches across the world.
No doubt there are plenty of researchers already set up to analyse the tweets.
For convenience, here’s a live feed of the hashtag:
Check out Russell’s half day courses on Tweeting for work/business:
Taking your tweeting to the next level
