Bureau of Justice AssistanceU.S. Department of Justice

What does listening online mean?

Listening or monitoring is the continuous conduct of

searches of content on the Internet for any discussions,

posts, videos, blogs, and online conversations about

your department or other topics of interest to you. The

purpose of listening is to discover what is being said

online, raise awareness about the community, and put

oneself in a position to correct false information or

rumors.

Why should law enforcement care about listening

online?

There are many benefits to listening on social media

channels, especially for law enforcement agencies. It is

important to be aware of what is going on in and around

the community and what people are saying on the Internet

about the agency, its municipality, its officers, or its events.

Monitoring can be incredibly valuable during a disaster

or other large event, by providing law enforcement

with situational awareness. Listening can also provide

information to guide resource allocation and other service

or response efforts. Law enforcement agencies can join in

conversations that the community is having about them,

but they must know where and what conversations are

going on. Social media monitoring allows agencies to have

this knowledge so they can better represent themselves

or prepare for an event. Listening through social media

channels can also assist in the mitigation of a criminal

event or disaster.

Defining a listening strategy

Regardless of whether an agency decides to use social

media tools in an official capacity, they may choose to

incorporate monitoring into their activities. Having a

monitoring strategy is highly beneficial and can help

guide agency efforts.

• Set goals—As with any strategy, you need to

set goals. What is it that you hope to achieve

by monitoring or listening? Perhaps you will

employ a special monitoring strategy as part of

disaster or other crisis response or in day-to-day

communication efforts.

• Decide where to monitor—Decide where you will

gather information. Maybe your community is

active on Twitter, so that will be a beneficial place

to search. Or perhaps you will search the World

Wide Web for a broader view. Where you decide to

monitor will help you choose what monitoring tools

you will employ.

• Decide what to monitor—Decide what you will

be monitoring, and what topics you will be searching.

If your goal is to provide situational awareness

during a disaster, you may search the name of your

community or the name of the disaster (such as

a hurricane name). If your goal is to monitor the

mentions of your agency, your search term will

contain your agency name. Some keyword ideas are

located in the sidebar.

Online listening tools

Conducting these searches may seem daunting; however,

there are many tools available to make the process

easier.

• Google Alerts—Instead of spending hours each day

doing Internet searches, you can sign up for search

results to be sent directly to you. Google Alerts

are e-mail updates that contain the latest relevant

search results based on the terms you select. This

can save you valuable time and keep you up to date.

• Twitter Search—At Search.Twitter.com you can

conduct and save a search of terms on Twitter. By

using the advanced options you can easily refine

your search to the results that most closely meet

your needs. You do not need a Twitter account to

conduct or save a Twitter search.

• RSS Feeds—RSS, short for Really Simple

Syndication or Rich Site Summary, is a Web format

that allows for new content to be delivered directly

to users. Instead of repeatedly visiting a Web site

to see if there is new content, users can subscribe

to a site’s RSS feed, which allows for any new

content to be sent directly to the user. To view

these RSS feeds a user must have a feed reader

such as Google Reader or Microsoft Outlook. These

readers organize the RSS feeds for easy viewing.

Subscribing to RSS feeds can be very helpful to law

enforcement agencies who want to stay informed

about things happening in and around their

community. You can subscribe to the local news

feeds or to blogs written by community members.

This project was supported by Grant No. 2009-MU-BX-K025 awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Office for Victims of Crime, the Community Capacity Development Office, and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking. Points of view or opinions in this document do not necessarily represent the official positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Listening strategy Fact sheet

International Association of Chiefs of Police

International Association of Chiefs of Police

1-800-THE-IACP socialmedia@theiacp.org www.IACPsocialmedia.org

July 2011

To learn more about using these monitoring tools, check out the tutorials available on the IACP Center for Social Media at www.iacpsocialmedia.org/Resources/ToolsTutorials.aspx.

Possible search topics• Name of agency• Name of municipality• Name of event

• Names of officers