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Paper short abstract:

Social media is reinforcing the internal networks of police officers and other security organs that instead jeopardise the crime-police relationships. This article seeks to interrogate both the hidden and visible entanglements of social media that negate a futuristic vision of effective policing.

Paper long abstract:

There is growing ambiguity that comes with the role of social media vigilanteism as a crime prevention and control strategy. Social media has built a foreseeable future for crime management, in general. Social media vigilantism has been at the forefront in unearthing the otherwise-impossible-to-access information on crime in societies not only in Uganda but also across borders. For example, several within-boarders-crimes as well as cases of human trafficking and abuses of domestic workers abroad (mainly in the middle eastern countries) have been transmitted to the government and related security organs for legal action through social media (mainly YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp). However, on the flip side, social media is reinforcing the internal networks of police officers and other security organs that instead jeopardise crime-police relationships. Also, there has been an upsurge of social media-guided political persecutions where a mere comment insinuating opposition to the regime or an upload of oppositional content has become dangerous in the recent past. This article seeks to interrogate both the hidden (implied) and visible entanglements of social media that negate a futuristic vision of effective policing. The role of social media in expanding the gap between the state and the citizens still demands nuances.