SPSS data for police crisis communication scoping review

This article conducts a scoping review of global scholarship on police communication during crises and critical incidents, focusing on themes, geographical distribution, and theoretical and methodological orientations. The review critically assesses whether scholars integrated or mentioned public relations and crisis communication theories in their studies of police crisis communication. Using an in-depth content analysis of peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2024 across 128 academic journals, sourced from databases such as EBSCOhost and Google Scholar, 170 articles were selected from an initial dataset of 10,300 articles based on predefined relevance criteria. The analysis reveals that while research into police communication is substantial, only 25.9% of the studies explicitly address police crisis communication. The remaining 74.1% primarily explore broader policing themes, including public health, media relations, negotiation, strategic communication, operational practices, and mental health. Notably, the findings indicate that only 29.4% of the reviewed articles explicitly engage with well-established crisis communication and public relations theories, while the remaining 70.6% adopt a policing-focused perspective without theoretical integration from these fields. These findings highlight a critical gap in the literature and underscore the need for further interdisciplinary research into the specific dynamics of police crisis communication, particularly in the context of critical incidents and national emergencies.