Critical Making Workshops for Enhancing Public‑Sector Social Media Communication: A Study of the Swedish Police Authority

This study introduces critical making workshops as a participatory methodology, commonly used in design and sociotechnical research but rarely applied in strategic communication. It examines how employees of the Swedish Police Authority understand and strengthen organizational social media communication related to complex societal matters. Four workshops, each involving three to four employees, explored how participants collaboratively engaged in discussion, hands‑on activities, and reflection to assess and improve the police’s social media communication aimed at fostering a sense of public safety. The findings demonstrate the value of critical making as an exploratory, bottom‑up method that foregrounds grassroots perspectives. Organized as a five‑step process – pre‑selected scenarios, iterative and exploratory making, reflection, the researcher’s role, and analysis of empirical outcomes – the workshops offered a flexible environment where participants connected prior experience with new insights and reflected on communication challenges. Unlike traditional qualitative or quantitative methods, critical making combines practical explorations with interactive and reflexive processes, encouraging participants to examine complex issues without predefined judgments of “right” or “wrong.” Consequently, this study demonstrates the value of critical making workshops for advancing participatory, exploratory, hands‑on, and reflective practices within strategic communication research.