React or not to react? The Swedish Police and its conflict handling strategy on Facebook

Abstract

The purpose of my study was to get a view about how the Swedish Police handles conflict situations on their Facebook page. Presence of authorities and organizations on social media site is a new trend and the exploring of the experiences and development are in progress both from their side and from users’ side. People have access to comment on the Police’s statuses and they undertake their positive or even negative opinion showing their identity. In some cases they do get reply from the Police, but in other cases they do not. Does the behaviour of the Police increase trust in people or not? My research was based on a discourse analysis, focusing on Facebook users’ negative comments and how the Police replied – if they did. The results were showing a negative picture of the Police’s conflict handling style which may sink trust in people.