Social Media Analytics Tools for Law Enforcement is a comprehensive analysis of how law enforcement agencies can use geofeedia and similar software to monitor social media. Although there has been some controversy over the use of these tools, this book shows how the data collected by geofeedia and other similar tools, when analyzed effectively and efficiently, can help prevent or solve crimes, save lives during natural disasters, and help police departments in a variety of ways.
Are you curious about social media analytics tools for law enforcement? Or are you interested in free social media analytics tools 2021? Let’s stand back and look at the wider picture. With the development of online social platforms, criminals and law enforcers have raised their stakes in both the physical and digital worlds. Law enforcement bodies all over the world are monitoring social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to gather evidence on crimes happening in the community. This requires a lot of information that needs to be gathered in real time. A chief or police officer will then collect this data with relevant legal authority and carry out necessary action based on it
Social Media Analytics Tools for Law Enforcement is a great resource to help law enforcement professionals access and use data from social media. This book offers practical and conceptual guidance as well as a how-to in identifying and gathering information freely available on the web. The author, Emma Jane, is an associate professor at the University of New South Wales and an internationally regarded scholar of surveillance technologies, privacy, gendered violence, and sex work. It covers topics such as social media mining tools for crisis response; listening for desired intelligence using geofeedia; Twitter live stream analytics; monitoring Facebook using snapshots from Socialbakers; and surveillance during natural disasters.
Social media has become the heart of social life for all the people from all walks of life, be it a businessman, an athlete, a politician, or even a law enforcement official. In fact social media is not only the talking point but also the arena where you can actually investigate, look around and find out something that might hurt you professionally or even legally. In order to protect oneself one must know what is seen by everyone and this can only be possible when we keep an eye over some of the social media analytics tools 2021.
Social Media Monitoring Tools
It is a broad term that encompasses a wide range of tools.
- One type of tool is a search engine that users can use to search the full text from the posts on numerous platforms and/or blogs. It ensures users query information in real time or conduct searches over time periods.
- Another type of tracking tools gives users an opportunity to monitor and be notified when specific keywords or phrases, or certain words are used in the social media. As it’s usually done, updates are sent to the user’s email account when there is an activity related to a particular keyword. This kind of tool can also be bundled with other tracking tools.
- The third type of the tool does not search for keywords or phrases but rather monitors whether a given person is writing posts related to certain words during a time period or about a particular topic in general.
Those from police who have limited resources or budget constraints consider such tools for basic monitoring. For those who have more resources and time restraints, search engine and keyword-based tracking may be most cost effective tools for investigating cases.
In addition to searching for keywords, these tools allow law enforcement government agencies to receive alerts when there are bursts in network activity. This can be particularly helpful for finding leads in child exploitation cases, monitoring a person’s movements during an investigation, or tracking the popularity of certain topics.
Sophisticated tools that track people’s movements and publicize certain posts require additional investigation resources.
Below are Some of Social Media Monitoring Services
- Talkwalker – is a search engine that simultaneously searches for mentions on different sites and aggregates the results.
- Reputology – This tool combines search engines, keyword aggregation, and monitoring tools into one. It provides users with real-time alerts and allows them to filter the results according to specific keywords.
- NetBase – Alerts allow users to receive an email when there are bursts in activity related to their keyword or topic, such as an increase in tweets, Facebook posts, etc. It can monitor up to three different topics per account. Users can monitor each of these topics separately or all three at the same time. It has both free and premium versions, which includes an additional keyword. Free version provides basic alerts whereas premium version provides alert notifications on keywords, topics, or hashtags related to the social accounts.
- Synthesio – this tool allows users to monitor keywords from all popular platforms at the same time (applicable to Twitter, Facebook, blogs and others). Synthesio also monitors updates on such platforms as YouTube, Flickr, and LinkedIn. It provides users with real-time notifications regarding keywords and topics related to their account in order to keep them updated on those topics.
- Brandwatch – is a monitoring tool for brands, which automatically tracks mentions from around multiple platforms and provides alerts on keywords or trends related to the brand. They also have an app to monitor the brand’s activity, as well as check out trends within the company.
- Mentionlytics – is a tool that provides a chronological list of queries that have been run across different platforms. They automatically parse the results from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and send out alerts.
- ReviewTrackers – this service offers users the observation of their competitors and finding out what kind of SMM they’re using so they can learn from them.
- ReputationDefender – is a monitoring tool for brand reputation management, which can scan networks and blogs to determine connections between websites or bloggers and brands in real time.
- Scoop.it – This tool allows users to follow up several platforms (such as Tumblr, Flickr, Twitter) with the help of keywords and search engines. Users can also create profiles to monitor specific topics.
- Sysomos – Besides controlling keywords, this tool also monitors specific people. It is most frequently used by law enforcement agencies to conduct investigations based on the location of certain individuals and their interests, such as gang activity.
- Brand24 – This tool is helpful in creating social profiles to monitor certain keywords. The tool also sends real-time updates when certain keywords appear in a particular platform.
- Falcon Social – is useful conversations analysis in social media.
- Radian 6 – is a monitoring tool for mentions of specific entities on various social platforms. Radian 6 provides information about who mentioned an entity and what was said. Users can also receive alerts when there are spikes in conversation about an entity or certain words associated with it on various platforms. A major limitation of Radian 6 is that only one topic or keyword can be searched at a time.
To head off unruly crowd sentiment over social media and to detect advance possible mass gatherings before it descends on the city soil, Mumbai Police have set up a social media monitoring facility. The first of its kind in India from a law enforcement unit, The Social Media Lab will monitor Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other prominent social media platforms to measure changes in mass moods and track matters concerning public law and order. 20 specially trained police officers will keep a vigil on widely discussed and trending topics and try to tie social media and criminality together.
Worldwide, law and enforcement authorities are waking up to the anti-social surprises social media have been unveiling in recent times. Last year, during the London Olympics, Scotland and Wales police trailed software to predict where and when crime and social disorder may take place, reported The Herald. In August, 2011, the NY Daily News reported that the NYPD have started to mine social media for information about troublesome house parties, gang showdowns, and other potential mayhem.
Recently, a blog post on the official FBI blog urged local police to monitor social media for leads on criminal activity. The writer, who is a retired major with the Montgomery, Alabama Police Department, and now the assistant chief agent at the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center, has asked the local law enforcement officers to use the internet as a predictive tool for everything from apprehending fugitives, singling out associate suspects, linking individuals to street gangs, and providing evidence of criminal activity.
For a Better Tomorrow
By monitoring social media and analytics, a city, state, or government can make more informed decisions. Some decisions can be predicative; some could be based upon analyzing public sentiment during, post, or pre-event. With the right tools and resources, sudden events like earthquakes, terrorist attacks, tornadoes, flooding, wildfire, shootings or bombings can be managed with proper responsive actions.
Cost Savings and Better Resource Deployment
A comprehensive monitoring campaign can provide deep insights about where the crowd is located, their movement, communication content, influencers, whereabouts, etc., without deploying manpower or logistics. A location-centric trend can help mobilize resources as per requirement.
Good Reads
Engage: Digital and Social Media Engagement for the Police Service from National Policing Improvement Agency, UK: This document aims to help police officers and staff to engage with their communities through the use of technology. It has been written with a purpose to make them aware of the new engagement technologies that exist in digital era with case studies from the United Kingdom forces. For all curious minds who live and breathe social media, it’s a must read guide (and a best practice example) to know how law and enforcement is looking at social media to form a barrier between criminals and society.
Using Social Media to Prevent Gang Violence and Engage Youth from Northeastern University: The technological boom during this past generation has completely changed the way youths consume information. This report cites a Nielsen study finding which says that 57% of young people rely on social networks as a key source of information and advice. This is an insightful report from Northeastern University on how social media monitoring services can serve as a catalyst for gang and youth violence prevention strategies.
Social Media Analytics for LEA
Social media has become a cesspool of information, a journal of movements, opinions, relationships, and ideologies. This makes Social Media a salient platform for monitoring and analysis of individuals, groups, and events. This information, rather data is of crucial importance to the law enforcement agencies for tracking and monitoring of suspects and criminals.
With almost 462 million people, more than 35% of India’s population is online. India has the second-largest number of internet users in the world and it has experienced 30.5 % growth since 2015. The growing users are making it a goldmine of information.
The recent trend of posting live pictures and videos of criminal and disastrous activities has become an instrument of real-time information dispensation of the causalities. This can help the LEA not only in staying updated but also in planning their next course of action.
Social media analytics is a part of OSINT processing, where data collected from publicly available sources are used to create intelligence. Social media, includes all platforms like Facebook, Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, Yelp, Twitter, etc. Twitter hashtags and trending videos are high zones of activity which can be monitored by the Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) constantly.
Predicting Mass agitation
People usually turn to social media to advertise any strike, rally or any other important event that requires public turnover. This becomes an area of interest for the LEA because of the constant possibility of these events taking a violent turn and it’s precautionary to monitor them before they get out of hand.
OSINT, especially social media analytics conveys the Time, Date, Location, People of Interest and other various details which can help to monitor and control the law and order situation. It can help us track public opinions and sentiments across various social media platforms. It can also predict the scope and reach of any propaganda or radical movements.
For example- If LEA learns that there are whispers of mass agitation scheduled to happen on a specific day, they can take considerable steps to control the damage while monitoring it to prevent major casualties or damage.
Suspect Profiling
Once the reckoning of an event is known to the LEA, surveillance follows. It is also known as Social Profiling which is the process of constructing a User’s (usually a suspect) profile using their publicly and voluntarily shared social data. In general, profiling refers to the data science process of generating a person’s profile with AI-based algorithms and technology. It helps in understanding the suspect and its behavioural aspects with the 360-degree assessment.
This includes –
- Monitoring the posts, tweets, etc
- Keeping track of the number of people supporting it and against it
- Capturing the degree of sentiments
- Activities of the concerned individual in lieu of provoking or instigating people
- The general consensus regarding the concerned individual or the content shared by them
Conclusion
Social media is ever-changing, which makes it incredibly hard to track. If the thought of tracking social media on your own is making you break into a cold sweat, don’t worry! A number of software tools have emerged over the years that help you monitor and even analyze social profiles. Check out this article to find out about the best software for tracking social media, including a few free options to get you started.
Social Media Analytics Tools for Law Enforcement enables law enforcement agencies to remotely collect a multitude of social media data from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and more. The data can then be used for small or large scale investigations. Some of the features include device geo-location, keyword search results, geo-fencing and mapping. Social media analytics helps law enforcement monitor for domestic threats without violating rights.