COIMBATORE: Moving away from traditional forms of public-interest announcements, the police department has finally woken up to the power and reach of social media tools and joined the long line of users to tap into the rich potential of bite-sized memes. The social media cell of the West Zone police has been creating memes to convey messages of social welfare and law enforcement. No sooner had they begun the initiative than followers started thronging their social media pages.
Be it cricket favourites doing the ‘Beatles’ walk for a public service announcement (PSA) on zebra crossings or ‘Contractor’ Nesamani demonstrating the effects of not wearing a helmet, the cell has been creating memes based on current trends and fads to run their awareness campaigns. Memorable movie scenes, crickets references and popular personalities like Yogi Babu and Goundamani feature in these memes.
The wing’s social media page that was working as any other on the platform had to go through an image makeover to accommodate these modern tools, says on official working in the wing. Working out of the office of the inspector general of police at Race Course, the police personnel were given training on creating memes and using them in their campaigns. Since, they have been using it to create awareness on road accidents, the importance of helmets and seatbelts, need for CCTV cameras and more.
When this garnered quite some interest, the wing also started publishing information on the department’s cases, arrests and achievements. It covers the work of the department in the eight districts -- Coimbatore, The Nilgiris, Tirupur, Erode, Dharmapuri, Salem, Krishnagiri and Namakkal -- under its ambit. Through this, the cells plan to manage the department’s reputation. While the cell was launched in November 2018, it has been working on capitalising on the social media influence since January this year. Since then, they have been able to witness the results of the campaigns through the rise in the number of followers for their social media pages.
A senior official involved with the social media cell explained that the whole idea is to ensure maximum publicity. “We have been collecting information from the eight districts and uploading it on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with the aim to get people (particularly youngsters) to obey the rules and regulations. As long as the message is received, we consider our objective to have been achieved our objective,” the official explained. For one thing, the memes definitely have more reach than roadside posters, the official added.
Inspector General of Police (West Zone) K Periaiah said the cell will boost the department image as well as provide something good for the public. “The cell has prepared a platform for the department to share our success stories. Apart from the departmental news, the team is concentrating on raising awareness through the catchiest way, which gets easy attention from the public”, he added.