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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
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Results for twitter
6 results foundAuthor: Bartlett, Jamie Title: @metpoliceuk: How Twitter is Changing Modern Policing: The Case of the Woolrich Aftermath Summary: Major events – natural disasters, football matches, terrorist attacks – are increasingly accompanied by a complex, varied and evolving cloud of reaction on Twitter: questions, interpretations, condemnations, jokes, rumours and insults. This surge of online information, shadowing the event itself, is often called a ‘twitcident’. This new kind of aftermath opens new opportunities and challenges for policing.i Inherently amenable to collection, measurement and analysis, they can be harnessed as sources of social media intelligence – ‘SOCMINT’ – in a number of ways to keep society safe: as important sources of evidence; as situational awareness in contexts that are changing rapidly, as a way of crowd-sourcing intelligence, and to answer a backdrop of strategic research questions, such as how society will change in result of the event itself.ii Twitcidents do not just provide intelligence for the police, however. They also put pressure on the police themselves to provide information, intelligence and, where possible, public assurances. As we have argued elsewhere, social media is an increasingly important aspect of modern policing, particularly for intelligence collection and communication.iii It is now apparent that social media is an important part of any large incident or emergency response. As people continue to transfer their social lives onto these digital-social spaces, the benefits of effectively harnessing and responding to twitcidents will increase, and so will the risk of failing to do so. To understand the specific challenges and opportunities this presents, we have chosen to dissect in detail the tweets directed at @metpoliceuk immediately before, during and after the alleged murder of Lee Rigby by two individuals – believed to be Islamist extremists – in Woolwich at 14:20 on 22nd May 2013. After the murder, the alleged assailants remained at the scene, and spoke to, and were filmed by, bystanders. First unarmed, then armed police arrived and, following an exchange of fire, the two men were wounded and taken to hospital. As of May 29th the Metropolitan’s Police Twitter account (@metpoliceuk) was the most followed police account in the UK, with 114,369 followers. Up to the afternoon of the 22nd, the account was lively. Two online petitions were driving tweets to the police account, one to demand additional information be released from the McCann investigation, and the other demanding the arrest of the self-exiled Pakistani politician Altaf Hussain. BBC Breaking News’ Twitter account tweeted at 3.50pm that: Police officers called to incident in Woolwich, south-east London at 14:20 BST, @metpoliceuk confirm. No further details at present Quickly, news of the attacks began to circulate on Twitter, and video footage of the assailants – including one of the suspects talking to a bystander – was uploaded onto YouTube and other platforms. By the late afternoon, members of the English Defence League took to Twitter to organise a flash demonstration in Woolwich to express outrage at the murder; and by the early evening around 100 supporters clashed with police before being dispersed at around 11pm. In order to understand how people reacted on Twitter to these events, from May 17th to May 23rd, we ‘scraped’ all 19,344 Tweets that contained the identifying ‘@tag’ - @metpoliceUK. A Twitter scrape is the result of filtering the recent public Twitter timeline with a set of query terms through Twitter’s ‘Search Application Programming Interface’. All Tweets matching @metpoliceuk were in this way accessed, and downloaded into a MySQL database. With this corpus of collected tweets three simple analyses were conducted: Overall rates and volumes of tweets over time; A qualitative analysis of tweets to create overall ‘types’. Several thousand Tweets were manually placed into categories until ‘saturation’ – wherein new tweets neither required new categories to be created, or the boundaries of existing categories to be revised; The formal coding of 500 randomly selected tweets into these categories to establish the proportional breakdown of the dataset overall. This was done twice, the first, over the 24 hours of the 22nd, the second over the entire four days period during which the data was collected. This was in order to provide some broader analysis and comparison. Details: London: Demos, 2013. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 1, 2013 at: http://www.demos.co.uk/files/_metpoliceuk.pdf?1371661838 Year: 2013 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.demos.co.uk/files/_metpoliceuk.pdf?1371661838 Shelf Number: 129230 Keywords: Information TechnologyMediaPolicing (U.K.)Social MediaTwitter |
Author: Bryan, Tacicia Title: Black Lives Matter Toronto: A Qualitative Study of Twitter's Localized Social Discourse on Systemic Racism Summary: This Major Research Paper examines the Twitter discourse of Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLMTO), a chapter of the Black Lives Matter Movement which addresses issues of racism and police brutality. BLMTO protested in front of police headquarters between April 1st and April 15th, 2016 and used Twitter to document their protest during this time. This paper provides a content and sentiment analysis of 346 tweets collected during this time frame. The analysis of the Twitter content is based on concepts drawn from the scholarly literature on the public sphere, identity and social identity, and framing theory. My findings indicate the following: 1. Black Lives Matter Toronto uses media framing techniques, as well as logical and moral appeals, to build credibility as a strong subaltern counterpublic, an information resource for community building and an influencer online, through sharing relevant statistics, news stories and persuasive rhetoric. 2. BLMTO incorporates calls to action to create publicity and facilitate community mobilization. 3. Key themes in the tweets include the exercise of power in society, the need to build community and create a common sense of right and wrong, and maintaining solidarity Details: Toronto: Ryerson University, 2016. 69p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed April 26, 2018 at: http://digital.library.ryerson.ca/islandora/object/RULA%3A5401 Year: 2016 Country: Canada URL: http://digital.library.ryerson.ca/islandora/object/RULA%3A5401 Shelf Number: 149916 Keywords: Police BrutalityPolice Use of ForceRacial BiasRacial DisparitiesSocial MediaTwitter |
Author: Muller, Karsten Title: Making America Hate Again? Twitter and Hate Crime Under Trump Summary: Social media has come under increasing scrutiny for reinforcing people's pre-existing viewpoints which, it is argued, can create information "echo chambers". We investigate whether such reinforcement motivates real-life action, with a focus on hate crimes in the United States. We show that the rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the US since Donald Trump's presidential campaign has been concentrated in counties with high Twitter usage. Consistent with a role for social media, Trump's Tweets on Islam-related topics are highly correlated with anti-Muslim hate crime after, but not before the start of his presidential campaign, and are uncorrelated with other types of hate crimes. These patterns stand out in historical comparison: counties with many Twitter users today did not consistently experience more anti-Muslim hate crimes during previous presidencies. Details: Coventry, UK: University of Warwick, 2018. 44p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 2, 2018 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3149103 Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3149103 Shelf Number: 149972 Keywords: Bias Motivated Crimes Hate Crimes Minority Groups Muslims Social Media Twitter |
Author: Amnesty International Title: Toxic Twitter: Violence and Abuse Against Women Online Summary: Twitter is a social media platform used by hundreds of millions of people around the world to debate, network and share information with each other. From high-level female politicians to journalists, activists, writers and bloggers, to women who simply want to know what's happening around them - Twitter can be a powerful tool for women to make connections and express themselves. In fact, the company has touted itself as a place where 'every voice has the power to impact the world'. But for many women, Twitter is a platform where violence and abuse against them is allowed to flourish, often with little accountability. As a company, Twitter is failing to respect women's rights online by inadequately investigating and responding to reports of violence and abuse in a transparent manner. The violence and abuse many women experience on the platform has a detrimental effect on their right to express themselves equally, freely and without fear. Instead of Twitter strengthening women's voices, the violence and abuse women experience on the platform means that women are self-censoring what they post, limiting their interactions, or being driven off Twitter completely. At a watershed moment when women around the world are using their collective power to speak out and amplify their voices through social media platforms, Twitter's failure to respect human rights and tackle violence and abuse means that instead of women using their voices 'to impact the world', many women are instead being pushed backwards towards a culture of silence. Details: London: AI, 2018. 77p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 25, 2018 at: https://www.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Toxic-Twitter.pdf Year: 2018 Country: International URL: https://www.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Toxic-Twitter.pdf Shelf Number: 150374 Keywords: Online VictimizationSocial MediaTwitterViolence Against Women |
Author: Alexander, Audrey Title: Digital Decay?: Tracing Change over Time Among English-Language Islamic State Sympathizers on Twitter Summary: Until 2016, Twitter was the online platform of choice for English-language Islamic State (IS) sympathizers. As a result of Twitter's counter-extremism policies - including content removal - there has been a decline in activity by IS supporters. This outcome may suggest the company's efforts have been effective, but a deeper analysis reveals a complex, nonlinear portrait of decay. Such observations show that the fight against IS in the digital sphere is far from over. In order to examine this change over time, this report collects and reviews 845,646 tweets produced by 1,782 English-language pro-IS accounts from February 15, 2016 to May 1, 2017. This study finds that: - Twitter's policies hinder sympathizers on the platform, but counter-IS practitioners should not overstate the impact of these measures in the broader fight against the organization online. ‐ Most accounts lasted fewer than 50 days, and the network of sympathizers failed to draw the same number of followers over time. ‐ The decline in activity by English-language IS sympathizers is caused by Twitter suspensions and IS' strategic shift from Twitter to messaging platforms that offer encryption services. ‐ Silencing IS adherents on Twitter may produce unwanted side effects that challenge law enforcement's ability to detect and disrupt threats posed by violent extremists. - The rope connecting IS' base of sympathizers to the organization's top-down, central infrastructure is beginning to fray as followers stray from the agenda set for them by strategic communicators. - While IS' battlefield initiatives are a unifying theme among adherents on Twitter, the organization's strategic messaging output about these fronts receive varying degrees of attention from sympathizers. - Terrorist attacks do little to sustain the conversation among supporters on Twitter, despite substantive attention from IS leadership, central propaganda, and even Western mass media. ‐ Over time, there has been a decline in tweets following major attacks. This suggests that attacks in the West have diminishing effects in mobilizing support. - Current events - such as the attempted coup in Turkey and the 2016 U.S. presidential election - are among the most popular topics within the sample. ‐ Events unrelated directly to IS cause some of the greatest spikes in activity. ‐ These discussions are ongoing despite Twitter's policies. Conclusions and Policy Recommendations ‐ English-language IS sympathizers on Twitter defy straightforward analysis and convenient solutions. ‐ They are skilled problem-solvers in the digital sphere. Rather than ruminating over losses, angered adherents fight to be heard, either on Twitter or other digital platforms. ‐ Counter-IS practitioners must show a similar willingness to adapt and explore alternative ventures. ‐ While some collaboration is beneficial, the government cannot rely predominantly on the efforts of tech companies to counter IS and its supporters. Details: Washington, DC: George Washington University, 2017. 60p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 18, 2018 at: https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/DigitalDecayFinal_0.pdf Year: 2017 Country: International URL: https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/DigitalDecayFinal_0.pdf Shelf Number: 154039 Keywords: Counter-ExtremismExtremismSocial NetworksTerrorismTweetsTwitterViolent Extremism |
Author: Lopez-Sanchez, Daniel Title: Applying Local Image Feature Descriptors to Aid the Detection of Radicalization Processes in Twitter Summary: With the emergence of the online-radicalization phenomenon, several researchers have turned their attention towards the problem of automatic detection of online radicalization processes and profiles. In addition, several studies have been conducted trying to provide insight into the habits and language patterns used by radical profiles to spread their radical ideology. For instance, in [4] the authors manually identified a set of radical YouTube profiles and used different social network and natural language processing techniques to analyze the messages they published in the social network. This study revealed significant gender differences in the language and habits of radical users. Other authors have focused on the automatic detection of radical profiles. Most of these proposals focus solely on the textual content of individual publications, rather than analyzing the social interactions between confirmed radical users and users at risk of radicalization. For example, in [1] the authors adopted a machine-learning classification approach to detect ideologically extremist tweets based on linguistic and stylistic text features. In recent years it has become apparent that, to fully characterize the behavior of radical social network users, it is necessary to consider not only the textual content of messages but also the patterns in the interactions between social users. It has been shown that users in social networks interact in a homophilic manner; that is, they tend to maintain relationships with people who are similar to themselves, as characterized by age, race, gender, religion and ideology. For instance, in [6] the authors analyzed different community detection techniques to cluster users according to their political preferences, showing that users in the social network Twitter tend to form very cohesive networks when talking about political issues. In this context, our previous work [7] focused on the design of algorithms to measure the risk of radicalization of social users surrounding networks of confirmed radical users. If accurate enough, these algorithms might be applied by security forces to detect early radicalization processes, allowing the adoption of effective counter-measures in a timely manner. As described in the following section, our proposed algorithm was able to correctly identify users at risk of radicalization in different case studies. However, one limitation of the proposed framework was the high level of false positives that expert users had to filter out manually. In this document, we explore the use of image analysis algorithms in order to detect radical groups' iconography in social network profile images and publications. We believe this technology can be used in combination with existing interaction and text-based radical user detection techniques in order to reduce false positive rates. In particular, the presence of iconography from radical groups in online publications can be used to confirm or at least support the predictions of existing radicalization detection methods, prioritizing users which share or exhibit iconography of radical groups in their social profiles. The rest of this document is structured as follows. Section 2 briefly summarizes our previous work in the context of interaction-based radicalization detection, and explains how image processing techniques can improve the accuracy in this task. Section 3 presents some experimental results regarding the effectiveness of different image descriptors when retrieving images containing iconography of radical groups. Finally, section 4 presents the conclusions of this study and suggests some promising future lines of research. Details: The Hague, Netherlands: Europol, 2019. 12p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 20, 2019 at: https://www.europol.europa.eu/publications-documents/applying-local-image-feature-descriptors-to-aid-detection-of-radicalization-processes-in-twitter Year: 2019 Country: Europe URL: https://www.europol.europa.eu/publications-documents/applying-local-image-feature-descriptors-to-aid-detection-of-radicalization-processes-in-twitter Shelf Number: 154255 Keywords: Algorithms Countering Violent Extremism Detection Technique Extremism Internet On-line Radicalization Radical Users Radicalization Social Media Social Network Technology Twitter |