Met police swell their social media army

Scarcely a week seems to go by without an incident involving one of the Metropolitan Police’s social media accounts. Recent controversies on Twitter/X including ruling on whether the term ‘jihad’ constitutes hate speech, getting fact-checked by community notes and making demands for further powers in a post explaining their inability to prosecute those who clamber over statues.

So Mr S thought he’d do some digging into how much the Met’s online army is now costing the hard-pressed London taxpayer. As is the want of bureaucracies everywhere, the force recently undertook a reorganisation under which its ‘Social Media Team’ was subsumed into ‘a broader Digital Media Communication Team, in an expanded directorate.’ This – the Met is keen to stress – now includes such work as:

The provision of all digital media engagement, online events and staff engagement, corporate videography, photography, graphic design, content creation, data and analysis reporting to support internal, external and stakeholder communications.