Mumbai: Police starts its social media lab

Mumbai: With a view to study and understand the mindset of the netizens for the purpose of providing better safety and security in the metropolis, Mumbai police launched a social media laboratory. With this, Mumbai police have arguably become the country's first police force to open such a lab.

The lab is aimed at gathering all the available information on the web on the issues pertaining to governance and public order, based on which, police will chalk out a strategy to maintain law and order. After launching the lab, Mumbai police commissioner Satyapal Singh said, "The biggest media at present is social media. Through our social media lab, we will come to know the pulse of the people as to what they are thinking, writing and what's happening in the city, country and around the world. By reading the mindset of what people are writing on various modes of communication, we will try to provide better and improved safety and security to the Mumbai citizens".

"The bridging of the gap between the expectations of the public and the delivery of service shall be attempted through the lab," the city top cop added. During the press conference following the inauguration of the lab, Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan extended his support for the city police's endeavour.

"It is a great initiative by Mumbai police to be more involved, aware and informed through the contemporary modes of communication like social media," Bachchan added. "It is the pioneering step of the Mumbai police to understand what the youth, who are using the contemporary modes of communication, is thinking and what is going on around to understand the on trends," he added.

The social media lab shall work round the clock and assimilate relevant information from all the open sources in public domain. It will be manned by a team of twenty policemen, who have been specially trained for the above exercise.

This project has been supported by the NASSCOM and has been partnered by the Reliance Foundation. Training and technical infrastructure for the lab has been provided by these two organisations.