The public sphere faces many complex problems affecting its actors concerned with safety and fear. Furthermore, the general challenges with safety and fear are connected to a wicked problem with social implications and uncertainties, leading to public fear in the worst case. Here communication has a vital role. This study focuses on Sweden, and a wicked example is the struggle with gang violence, shootings, killings, and explosions that cause insecurity and fear in society. Hence, creating and communicating a sense of safety is thus vital to handle fear in the public sphere, and one actor to do this is the Swedish Police. 

This study aims to explore how the Swedish Police can, via participatory processes, understand and enhance their social media communication concerning the complexity of publicly creating a sense of safety. Therefore, in this study, Critical Making and Sensemaking are used as the theoretical lenses because of their participatory processes’ perspective. The empirical data builds on two workshops with police employees from the Police Region South [Polisregion Syd] (PRS), focusing on creating social media communication strategies to develop, understand, and strategically deepen their sense of safety communication. The workshops take a bottom-up perspective with police employees to grasp the polyphonic character and the complexity of their communication regarding creating a sense of safety in the public sphere. This study adds to the literature on public sector organizations and how strategic communication is utilized in social media communication of complex matters.