Mediated Proximity: Community Policing in the Digital Age

The article addresses the digital transformation of policing in practice, with specific emphasis on online police patrols. Empirically, the study is based on participatory observations and qualitative interviews with Norwegian officers. It reveals a shared emphasis on localism and proximity when engaging with the public online. Despite the transforming potential of the online sphere for policing, online patrols reproduce the core scope of local and community policing in physical spaces, such as local anchoring in a specific community; specific local police tasks such as crime prevention and “everyday offences”; and certain ways of policing locally, for example, via building relations and public trust. However, some initiatives and activities by online patrols differ from the existing organisational logic when attempting to establish what I call mediated proximity in online communities characterised by shared interests rather than defined by geography. The article concludes with a discussion of the feasibility of building and maintaining public trust by means of online policing, which all of the interviewees identify as a critical aspect of their work.