Police department websites and digital language accessibility: a platform for achieving effective communication between limited English proficient communities and the police
Police departments are increasingly relying on technology to strengthen community-police relations, and yet there exists little research on the ways police departments use digital platforms to meet the needs of those requiring language services. In this study we use the innovative methodology of web...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2023
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| In: |
Policing and society
Year: 2023, Volume: 33, Issue: 2, Pages: 129-149 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Summary: | Police departments are increasingly relying on technology to strengthen community-police relations, and yet there exists little research on the ways police departments use digital platforms to meet the needs of those requiring language services. In this study we use the innovative methodology of website content analysis (WebCA) to evaluate the websites of the fifty largest police departments in the U.S. for the presence of digital language accessibility, a novel measure that captures a police department’s efforts to make its programmes and services digitally accessible to people who are limited English proficient (LEP). WebCA expands on a general content analysis by drawing on methodological approaches from sociology, communications, and linguistics while accounting for the unique ways information is generated in digital spaces (e.g. images, features, links, and more) (Herring, S.C., 2010. Web content analysis: expanding the paradigm. In: J. Hunsinger, L. Klastrup, and M. Allen, eds. International Handbook of internet research. Dordrecht: Springer, 233–249). Our results suggest that police departments have largely synonymised digital language accessibility with machine translation – a response that arguably falls short of meaningful access. We use the findings from this study to offer practical suggestions for how police departments can more effectively communicate with LEP communities. Commitment to community policing requires both open and effective communication. As police departments embrace digital platforms to strengthen open communication, we argue that they ought to prioritise digital language accessibility as a way of establishing effective communication. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-2728 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/10439463.2022.2071893 |