A Study On The Social Media Usage By Police Departments In China In The Perspective Of Citizen Participation

As an important theme in public administration theory and practices,citizen participation is of great significance to realize political modernization and governance modernization for a country.It is also very important for the building of well public order and public security environment in public security administration area.With the social media age’s coming,more and more governments begin to use variety social media forms for communicating with citizens and encouraging citizen participation.Police Weibo and police We Chat are two kind of extremely influential social media forms during all the governments in China.To further know about the police departments’ social media usage and the citizen participation situation in China,combining with the author’s practical work experiences,this paper uses some representative Police Weibo and police We Chat samples and find that almost all the police departments have used Weibo and We Chat from east to west and from the ministry of public security to the prefectural public security bureau.The content in Police Weibo and police We Chat include publicity of police affairs,business services,PD-citizen interaction and daily life tips.From the number of fans in police Weibo and page views and comments in police We Chat,together with the respond by PDs and the consistent communication during each other,we can see that although citizen participation in police social media usage exist,obvious differences in different areas and obvious lacking of PDs’ responds in all areas exist.Citizen participation in police social media usage have presented some new characters,they are the combination of bottom-up and top-down process,the combination of different social media forms usage and the combination of online and offline services.However,from the analyze of the sample,we can also see that there still exist some obstacles to expand citizen participation.For example,both PDs and citizens have some misunderstandings about citizen participation,top-level design and sound management system inside and outside the PDs are imperfect and so on.To make full use of the social media forms to expand citizen participation and deepen the public security reformation in this social media age,PDs should raise the awareness of service and citizens should raise the awareness of political participation.What’s more,perfect top-level design and perfect management system for social media operation,responsibility system for policemen,incentive systems for citizens and communication systems during all PDs are needed.To make collaboration with citizens possible,PDs also need to strengthen propaganda and training,use new work methods and improve community policing.