According to research conducted by students of the University of Media, Arts and Communications (UNIMAC), the Ghana Police Service uses social media to positively affect public perception.

A group of four final-year Public Relations (PR) students, under the supervision of Dr. Solace Yawa Safo, a Lecturer at the University, came to this conclusion after analysing 461 random comments from 50 Facebook posts between May and September last year.

The study sighted by The Chronicle found that 36% of feedback in the comment section cheered the Police Service on, making the highest category of feedback, although only 2% expressed active support. The researchers agreed that the applause was because the police used the self-operated Facebook page effectively in telling their own story.

Advice from the public and stiff criticisms closely contested the 15% mark as the second most popular feedback. However, advice made second place only by a point, implying that the Service receives almost as many criticisms as recommendations from the public.

The report indicates that the three themes making 45% of meanings made from sampled comments were positive, while less than 18% were negative.

The student leader of the project group, Author and Public Affairs Officer, Mr. Pious D. Serwonu, who graduated with a first-class honours a few months ago, explained to The Chronicle that the study was inspired by the perceived or actual reputational issues of the Ghana Police Service.

“We had observed very active digital PR by the Police in recent years and wanted to analyze whether it affected public perception in any way and to what extent,” the team lead said.

In his opinion, social media offers organisations the opportunity to speak and listen for themselves, as confirmed by the case study. It offers perhaps the cheapest avenue to implement the dialogic PR model effectively.

The Dialogic PR Model is an approach to an organisation’s relations with its publics, which promotes interaction in honest and ethical ways through effective communication channels.

He indicated that the research did not investigate offline factors that could be influencing responses online, but agreed that the responses are obviously reactions to police online activity.

“What remains to be discovered is the exact kinds of posts that has produced the positive results,” he said, expressing profound gratitude to Dr. Solace Yawa Asafo for her guidance and strict supervision.

According to Dr. Solace Yawa Asafo, Supervisor of the team and Lecturer at UNIMAC, the project was one of the best she supervised in the year. She congratulated the team for the elaborate work which produced the 140-page report, especially the attention to detail as shown in the Appendix.

Fashion Designer and Entrepreneur Ms. Rhoda Adei Djanie, who is a member of the team, described the final year exercise as a great learning experience, and thanked her colleagues, Ms. Ruth Boateng, Ms. Dorcas Amponsah, and Mr. Pious D. Serwonu, for the fruitful collaboration.