Crowdsourcing Criminology: Social Media and Citizen Policing in Missing Person Cases

Abstract

Criminology is undergoing a process of innovation and experimentation with the rise of social media. Although police have traditionally been the locus of legal enforcement, ordinary citizens are increasingly afforded opportunities to participate in crowdsourced investigations. In this article, we explore the emerging field of crowdsourcing criminology and its relationship to newsmaking criminology, public criminology, and the reshaping of news as infotainment (popular criminology). Drawing on a case study of a missing person named Emma Fillipoff, and our experience of involvement in the development of a television (TV) documentary dedicated to help finding Emma, we examine the process of crowdsourcing in practice and how it may oscillate between infotainment and public criminology inspired by academic evidence. Crowdsourcing criminology represents both a theoretical and an applied shift in our research focus and paves the way for a host of new projects that strive to reveal the strategies and techniques that define and characterize crowdsourced investigations.

The Role Nurses Can Play in Addressing and Preventing the Prevalence of Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG)

“…Textual analysis of policies addressing MMIWG was the focus of one study (Rothenberg, 2019). Four studies used large data through crowdsourcing (Gray & Benning, 2019) and social media (Moeke-Pickering et al, 2018; Parsloe & Campbell, 2021) to examine the #MMIW social movement. One study (Desmoulins, 2019) interviewed individuals after they had attended the “Walking with Our Sisters” exhibit on MMIWG, asking the participants about their reactions to the exhibit.…”

“…Some studies reported that tribal members were unaware of victim services (Koch et al, 2022) and assumed if they reported to law enforcement they would not be believed (Murphy-Oikonen et al, 2022; Olson-Pitawanakwat & Baskin, 2021; Parloe & Campbell, 2021). One way to raise awareness of missingness among Indigenous women and girls that was suggested in several studies is to use a variety of media formats (Gray & Benning, 2019; Huey & Ferguson, 2020; Joseph, 2021; Moeke-Pickering et al, 2018; Parloe & Campbell, 2021).…”

“…The seven quantitative studies used state or national data sets to examine rates of missingness among Indigenous women and girls (Fox et al, 2022;Hawes et al, 2023;Huey & Ferguson, 2023;Joseph, 2021;Richards et al, 2021;Sharma et al, 2021;Yellow Horse et al, 2022). Two studies focused on thematic analysis of case studies (Gray & Benning, 2019;Johnstone & Lee, 2021). Five research teams completed data collection with tribal communities (Kenny et al, 2021;Koch, 2022;McKinley & Knipp, 2022;Murphy-Oikonen et al, 2022;Olson-Pitawanakwat & Baskin, 2021).…”

Organizations Decentered: Data Objects, Technology and Knowledge

“…Doctors and medical researchers, for instance, have come to confront data produced by patients through online personal diaries, patient communities, or social media (Kallinikos and Tempini 2014). Prosecutors and police officers nowadays deal regularly with evidence produced for infotainment and information hunting via crowdsourcing platforms (Gray and Benning 2019). Social media data are routinely used to make investment decisions in finance or to compute credit scores for insurance companies (O'Neil 2016).…”

Using Digital Open Source and Crowdsourced Data in Studies of Deviance and Crime

“…Social media allows potentially millions of users to view these images and then identify the subjects in them. In the case of searching for perpetrators of crimes, these efforts often identify assailants, such as Boston Marathon bomber or members of hate groups (Douglas, 2020;Gray & Benning, 2019;Nhan et al, 2017). However, these efforts sometimes become an exercise in vigilantism and deviate from true crowdsourced efforts as they lack a clear crowdsourcer or a clear criminal justice purpose; moreover, if the target is misidentified, there is no clear response to remedy the error (Chang & Poon, 2017;Douglas, 2020;Loveluck, 2019).…”