Effect of Social Media on Crime (Essay Sample)

Effect of Social Media on Crime Korri Thomas Student # 200344131 16 November 18 Georgian College – Public and Media Relations Professor: Beth Milliard Effect of Social Media on Crime The manner in which crime and victimization is understood and experienced has been immensely transformed by the popularity of social media platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Historically, opinions regarding crime were formed by people by what they see, hear and read on various forms of media; however, as social media takes over as the most preferred source of news, various social media platforms now have a direct impact on the manner in which crime is perceived and understood (Milivojevic & McGovern, 2014). In addition, social media has generated new concerns that are related to crime itself. Presently, it is not uncommon for victimization to occur through social media platforms. Irrespective of the negative aspects of social media that contribute to crime, not all news is bad news. This is in part due to social media providing the criminal justice system and law enforcement agencies the opportunity to enlist the local population in helping report criminal activities; therefore, like many other advancements in information communication and technology, social media has a good, a bad and an ugly side when it comes to the relationship it has with the law and the criminal justice system. Considering that mass media has evolved on many fronts and more specifically the internet, this essay will explain the use of social media and its relationship to crime from the perspective of police agencies. Additionally, this analysis will evaluate how social media has contributed to crime and whether it is an invaluable tool that can be leveraged to investigate and assist in helping in reporting criminal activity. Social Media Platforms Social media is known worldwide as the leader in the instant dissemination of news and information both in legitimacy and deceit. At the beginning of the year 2016, it was estimated that 3.4 billion people in the world utilized the internet. Out of these people, 2.3 billion used a variety of social media platforms. Considering that the current global population stands at 7.6 billion, the sheer number of people using the internet, specifically social media, highlights the potential for public participation and contribution to mass media (see Appendix A). Users of social media are not customarily restricted to the platform that they use. In addition to social media platforms, there are social messaging apps such as Telegram, Viber, Kik, and WhatsApp that have millions of subscribers to eschew traditional communications through mobile devices in favour of integrated platforms (Powell, Overington & Hamilton, 2017). In the year 2016, Facebook was estimated to have had 1.7 billion users, WhatsApp had 1 billion, Facebook messenger had 1 billion, WeChat had 806 million, Tumblr had 555 million, Twitter had 313 million, and Instagram had 500 thousand (see Appendix B). The result of subscribing to all these platforms is having an interconnected network of individual users who can communicate seamlessly across the world. Social media is not always about socializing with friends and family; the users of social media in the 21st century can easily encounter material that is malevolent and being distributed by terrorist/ extremist groups that are technologically skilled. The Dark Side of Social Media In recent years, the terrorist group with an abundance of monikers, called Islamic State in Levant (ISIL) has made headlines across the world for heinous genocidal crimes against humanity. More recently, media coverage has transitioned to focusing on them losing swathes of territory in various parts of the globe due to various government interdictions. Over the years that ISIL was rapidly expanding in the Middle East, it made nefarious use of social media by broadcasting atrocities that were utterly barbaric through the use of various platforms (Trottier, 2015). Of note, there are many other terrorist organizations that spread fear by manipulating and making use of global networks that distribute news. These terrorist organizations, including ISIL, made criminal activities inescapable, insidious, and personal by tapping into the personal news feeds of people where they interact with their family and friends. ISIL is an extreme example of how social media and criminal activities relate; thus, indicating how social media cannot only be influenced, but manipulated easily to the will of those who have negative intent. Closer to home, social media has also been used progressively and more frequently in conducting crime or assisting with criminal activities. The criminal justice system and law enforcement agencies face major difficulty in classifying the varied levels of crimes that are directly interconnected with social media. This is a result of offenders utilizing several platforms of social media as an instrument for planning criminal activities, while other criminals may use a single network to perpetrate crimes. In addition, due to the anonymity provided by the internet and lack of tangible evidence, it is more difficult to judge the severity of the crime that has been committed. According to Wood (2017), these forms of crime take place alongside the general background noise of abusive behaviour, click-jacking, doxing, pharming, and other devices designed to steal personal information. Some additional crimes that are committed on social media aside from terrorism and identity theft include stalking, financial crimes, sexual harassment, and racial abuse. According to a Federal Bureau of Investigations (2014) report, 12% of all the logged complaints in the year 2014 from the Internet Crime Complaint Centre involved social media. Of note, 12 percent was equivalent to 32,330 complaints that were made during that year. A similar report in the year 2015 did not indicate accurate social media statistics; however, with an increase of complaints in 2015 to 288,012 from 269,422 in 2014 due to increased scrutiny of social media, it is estimated that social media incidents also increased proportionally. Lastly, statistics from law enforcement agencies indicate that there are millions of North American citizens who fall victim or narrowly escape cybercrime annually. Irrespective of this fact, it is estimated that only 15% of the victims report such crimes to law enforcement agencies. Consequently, there are millions of crimes that are perpetrated on social media that go unreported. A Change in Crime It is incredibly difficult to determine the exact number of individual social media platforms; subsequently, making it difficult to ascertain precise crime statistics. At a fundamental level, the crime numbers that are reported vary based on different identifiers; not least of all when law enforcement agencies, and the criminal justice system follow up on a social media complaint. When this happens, a complaint is more likely to be directly registered as criminal activity and therefore will not be tracked from a social media standpoint. Furthermore, an operation that involves the recording and monitoring of a potential suspect will not be recorded at all; however, their activities on social media may help the police to make an arrest. As identified by Gong (2016), under these circumstances; instead of trying to detail an accurate number, it is more important for the police to understand how crime has been changed by social media. A good example is when a simple search on the internet for “arrested for online threat” produces a result totalling more than eleven million hits. Careful scrutiny of these results show that a greater majority of the threats originate from social media networks. As much as the severity of the threats varies greatly, social media networks, law enforcement agencies, and the entire criminal justice system has the obligation to assess the threat that has been made to determine whether it is real. As a result, when a group of teenagers post about a threat of clowns who are perceived to be killers in a school, whether such a threat is a hoax or not, it should be taken seriously and investigated. Social Media Users as Content Producers and Distributors As the use of social media increases, there has been a significant dynamic allowing that the consumers of media content can also be the producers of self-generated content, and they can also distribute that content. According to Wood (2017), people in the 21st century place themselves open to the voyeuristic gaze of others in uncountable small-scale private performances that are socially mediated for public consumption on an often large scale. The collective experience of ‘going viral’, tweeting, and posting has replaced the typical isolated act of turning on a television and watching news or reading the newspaper. The end result is that the audiences have shifted to active contributors from passive participants in the social realm and that a performance emerges as soon as a common characteristic of media content is determined. As a result of these trends, many of the seemingly disparate activities of justice and crime by judicial personnel, law enforcement, and offenders can be understood through the conceptual lens of performance. Therefore, in the new reality of social media, the general public does not only get to follow justice and crime, but also gets a chance to participate and add their own performances – performance crimes being the most noticeable. Disassociation and Performance Crimes This is one of the many unfortunate facets that have rocked the internet culture, and is mostly exemplified through social media; hence, it is one of the key reasons why police agencies and the criminal justice system should monitor the internet for criminal activity. This basicall...