Personal or professional? : An exploratory analysis of Finnish and Swedish police officers on social media

This paper examines how individual police officers use social media as part of their communication routines and what strategies generate. Specifically, this study focuses on how police officers balance between presentations of their personal and professional lives on Instagram or TikTok by using content analysis methodology of 20 posts from Finnish and Swedish police officers. This paper adds to the literature on strategic communication and digital public sector communication. The results build an understanding about the possible challenges that may follow as public sector organizations and authorities utilize social media in their strategic communication and seek to connect with the public in more personal ways.
Work in progress.