#Screening out: Criminal justice students’ awareness of social media usage in policing

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Cogent Social Sciences

Publication Date

1-1-2019

Abstract

The “rise of police indiscretion” on social media has sparked demands to closely monitor officers’ online activity and more effectively screen job applicants. The extent to which criminal justice majors are aware that personal profile content on networking sites (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) factor into recruitment, background checks, and personnel monitoring practices is absent in the literature. Results from a survey of undergraduate students enrolled at a private North-east university indicate their perceptions of police usage of social media to generally align with the manner in which these officials leverage this technology. Few respondents rated their own comments, pictures and videos as inappropriate but were critical of material posted by other site users. And, though comfortable with a range of potential audiences viewing their content, students were unequivocal in their expectation of privacy even as they varied in confidence that their posts would be shielded from employer searches.

Volume

5

Issue

1

First Page

1

Last Page

16

DOI

10.1080/23311886.2019.1573570

E-ISSN

23311886

Link to Full Text

Share

 
COinS