Role of state machinery’s crisis management on social media platforms
Every developing country goes through tough times in acquiring and maintaining the basic fabric that defines it. During the journey, the country witnesses upheavels, rebellions, people’s unrest, corruption by authorities, scams, and other reasons that make people feel disillusioned.
No matter how bad the prevailing situation, citizens retain faith in the state machinery like the Police, Judiciary and Executives to keep their hopes alive and hope for the advent of a positive change.
In times of distress, a normal citizen expects the state machinery to maintain a human face, listen to its issues and work without a bias. At the same time, the state machinery in particular the Police, has the responsibility to act without bias in an indifferent manner to fulfill its duties and bring law and order back to normalcy.
What happens when Law and Order gets out of hand
In a situation where the law and order gets out of hand and a section of population rebels against the Police, the role of police to maintain law and order without being vindictive against the rebelling section of population becomes crucial and tough to execute. It becomes more difficult in the current scenario where the 4th pillar of Democracy, namely the Media is even more vigilant and the slightest report of violence by Police gets highlighted. Not to mention, the Human Rights activists applying pressure on the top functionaries to rectify the police excesses.
In such a chaotic scenario, what role does Police’s owned media channels like Facebook page, Twitter handle, etc play? If Police does an effective crisis management on social media channels, does the strategy quell the rebellion and does it alleviate the tempers of the rebellion group?
In recent times, India has seen a nationwide agitation led by Jamia Students against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
#CAAProtests hashtag report
While one group of citizens vehemently oppose the act and the impact of their voice resonates with the hashtag #CAAProtests:
#CAASupport hashtag report
Those in support of CAA can be measured with the hashtag #CAASupport:
Since the issue took a violent turn in Delhi, so the Social Buzz team conducted a vlog and podcast for the issue at hand from an apolitical and dispassionate view. The end objective of the activity was to understand that if the state machinery, in particular Delhi Police and Mr Amulya Patnaik, Commissioner of Police, Delhi, had handled the situation through effective online crisis management strategy tapping their respective social media channels, would the situation have been better and less violent?
Check out the vlog here:
Check out the podcast here:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/536419/episodes/2398901
Your comments on the best trends to follow for Crisis management on social media platforms would be highly appreciated.