ABSTRACT

Police departments are becoming increasingly homogenous as they struggle to recruit demographically diverse officers with desirable characteristics. Youths’ exposure to police brutality on social media may decrease their perceptions of police and interest in policing careers. Despite adolescents being the future pool of police applicants, social media’s relation to adolescents’ perceptions of police is understudied. Utilizing a stratified sampling approach to approximate representation of the U.S., this study analyzed how youths’ exposure to police content on social media was related to trust in the police and interest in police careers. The findings indicated that the more youth were exposed to negative social media on policing, the poorer they viewed police legitimacy, and the less they were willing to enter policing. Police legitimacy partially mediated the relation between adolescents’ exposure to social media content about police and their interest in policing careers. Implications for research, policy, and police behavior are discussed.

摘要

警察部门正变得越来越同质化，因为他们努力招募具有理想特征的人口多样化的警察。青少年在社交媒体上接触警察暴行可能会降低他们对警察的看法和对警务职业的兴趣。尽管青少年是未来的警察申请人群体，但社交媒体与青少年对警察的看法之间的关系尚未得到充分研究。本研究利用分层抽样方法近似代表美国，分析了青少年在社交媒体上接触警察内容与对警察的信任和对警察职业的兴趣之间的关系。调查结果表明，青少年在警务方面接触负面社交媒体的次数越多，他们对警察合法性的看法就越差，他们越不愿意进入警务领域。警察合法性部分调节了青少年接触有关警察的社交媒体内容与他们对警务事业的兴趣之间的关系。讨论了对研究、政策和警察行为的影响。