Followers double for TN police on social media thanks to lockdown

Chennai

The Facebook page of Tamil Nadu police, which had about 1.5 lakh followers by the end of January, now boasts of 3.10 lakh followers and their YouTube channel 14,600 followers.

For a wider reach, the State police have collaborated with a private content aggregator in which 7,500 members have subscribed to the police’s page. What is more, people can also be a part of the police’s broadcast to get all the updates by sending an SMS to an exclusive WhatsApp number.

“To hear it straight from the horse’s mouth is the USP for our social media outreach. There was a lot of wrong information doing the rounds ever since the COVID outbreak and subsequent lockdown which attracted people to our pages. Of late, we have been sharing not just what police do, but also what people need to know to stay informed during the lockdown,” says V Vikaraman, SP (Automation), who
 also coordinates the social media wing, christened Social Media Centre.
 
A team of 10 police personnel led by sub-inspector  Santhalakshmi is collating content for TN police’s social media pages, vetted by seniors. “We’ve been trained in cinematography and video-audio editing,” says the sub-inspector.

Cracking of major  cases, humanitarian work, various initiatives, announcements, awareness videos etc
are some of the content posted with visuals accompanied by voiceover and text.

The team covers major events such as Devar Jayanthi and Tiruvannamalai girivalam and makes a short video with a proper script for its YouTube and  Facebook pages. 

Santhalakshmi says they also get a lot of queries in the Facebook inbox. “Women in particular, who are apprehensive to approach police directly, reach out and we connect them to the all-women police station concerned,” she says.

The highlight of the social media centre is its WhatsApp number 94981 11191 to which anybody can send a ‘JOIN’ message to get regular updates.

“It’s even better than Facebook or YouTube and helps keep people informed in a law-and-order situation. We are also trying to sort out the issue of bulk messaging,” says Vikraman Vasudevan.

The idea to create social media presence for police was proposed by ADGP (Admin) P Kandaswamy and SP Vikraman, says DGP JK Tripathy.

Also, the Chief Secretary and Home Secretary were impressed with the impact of the social media centre that additional funds have been allocated for its expansion.

“There are plans to create small social media units in each district to disseminate necessary information. Also, we want to make it a two-way medium to get clarification from officials concerned for the sake of media and petitioners and post the same on social media for accountability,” says Vikaraman. However, as the next step, TN police plans to debut on Twitter once this pandemic phase is over.