The research was funded by the ENU-based Scottish Institute for Policing Research
A newly-published study into the rise of so-called ‘influence policing’, which involved Edinburgh Napier University (ENU), has found a wide variation in the use digital communications between different forces.
Funded by the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR), which is based at Edinburgh Napier, researchers from four UK universities studied Police Scotland’s strategic communications team, and its use of targeted digital communications for crime prevention – while also analysing of the use of these ‘influence’ approaches across the UK, using a new dataset from the Meta Ad Library.
Influence policing is described as an emerging phenomenon, which uses digital targeted ‘nudge’ communications campaigns by police forces and law enforcement agencies to directly achieve strategic policing outcomes. They go beyond ‘information’ campaigns or those which simply tell or ask the public to do something, and instead incorporate psychological design elements that attempt to affect individual behaviour choices.
The study found that while Police Scotland avoided many of the invasive aspects of influence policing, elsewhere there were examples of ‘serious harm and ethical breaches’.
The report makes several analytical contributions and recommendations - including calling for regulation and greater transparency, with an open register of digital campaigns by public sector bodies detailing their targeting approaches.
ENU Lecturer Dr Shane Horgan was involved in the research team, as well as academics from the University of Edinburgh, Strathclyde University and the University of Cambridge.
Dr Ben Collier, lecturer in Digital Methods at the University of Edinburgh, who led the project, said: “The tools of digital advertising and surveillance are giving law enforcement in the UK powerful and potentially risky new capacities to influence the public.
“While we have found many examples of positive and innovative practice, we have also found serious harm and ethical breaches in the wider spread of these practices in the UK.
“The same tools are being used by different bodies in radically different ways - where some are engaging directly with communities to support them, others are using stereotyped or invasive targeting for harmful and unaccountable campaigns.
“Within this variety of approaches, we found a distinctive ’Scottish’ model emerging in Police Scotland that avoids many of the invasive aspects being used in the wider UK landscape, facilitated by the more centralised accountability structure of the national force.
“If these methods are to become part of the future ’toolkit’ of law enforcement, then they need to be transparent and accountable to the public.”