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Met social media spend doubles in two years

(Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

It’s been a difficult year for the Metropolitan Police. Commissioner Cressida Dick was forced out in April after a string of scandals while the force’s broader handling of issues around racism and sexism has also been called into question. Given all that, it can be difficult to hire new officers willing to join the force; hence why it’s probably shelling out oodles on adverts urging LGBT+ applicants to sign up and a further £400,000 on a trailer which looked like a Bond film.

And social media is being used more and more to further that goal it seems. For despite criticism that police forces across the country are too obsessed with social media, the Met has only doubled down on its online efforts. A Freedom of Information request by Mr S has revealed that the police force’s social media budget more than doubled in two years between 2019/20 and 2021/22 from £141,000 to £289,000. The number of staff has jumped too by 60 per cent from five in April 2019 to eight currently employed on its books.

A spokesman for the Met Police told Mr S:

We need the public to support our appeals and investigations, we can explain the work of the police and inspire people to consider a career in policing. Social media is often the most efficient and effective method to achieve this. This investment reflects the increased opportunity and expectation for the Met to inform and engage the public directly across all platforms and formats.

Among those platforms of course is TikTok – whose parent company, ByteDance, has close ties with China’s propaganda industry. A Forbes analysis earlier this month found that 300 current TikTok and ByteDance employees previously worked for Chinese state media publications while Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said ‘We absolutely should be cracking down on those types of companies’.

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