[Knowledge Base] Crowdsourcing Criminology: Social Media and Citizen Policing in Missing Person Case

[Empirical_Scientist]

The following research article published in 2019 argues on the emerging practice of crowd-sourcing criminology, a phrase the authors have coined to describe public engagement in solving cases via use of formal techniques and/ or established best practices admixed with modern information and communication technologies, such as social media: SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals.

The authors make reference to how crowdsourcing investigative approaches could have helped (and could still help) in the case of Emma Fillipoff's disappearance in 2012. In particular:

The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) reached out and directly invited us (a professor and students in an undergraduate criminology class at the University of Victoria) to participate in their crowdsourcing investigation. We were asked to engage in the following three forms of fieldwork: (a) collect field notes while walking by foot from The Empress Hotel to the Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre (10 km), (b) collect field notes while riding the bus from The Empress Hotel to the Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre, and (c) collect field notes while driving by car from The Empress Hotel to the Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre. The CBC also requested that they film us while we engaged in fieldwork. Students were also instructed to take detailed field notes as well as record their trip on their smartphones.

The authors discuss how, despite CBC's treatment of their involvement in the field data collection, they used several techniques to analyze the collected field data in the context of how crowdsourcing could have better assisted Emma's case. Their findings are equally impressive and show the importance of how educated and proactive individuals can act early on to engage themselves and the pertinent public in crowdsourcing activities to solve a case:

It became clear that the geographical possibilities of Emma’s journey after she was last seen at The Empress Hotel were very broad. While such variation could be interpreted as discouraging, the (research) group found it useful when inductively discussing ways to use crowdsourcing in Emma’s missing person case. For instance, these geographical observations suggested that crowdsourcing might need to be reconceptualized to take into account the potentially different crowdsourcing audiences within specific cases.

Here, the crowdsourcing audience refers to the collective of individuals who could potentially be related to a particular lead in the case. For instance, in the recent case of Fatemeh Abdolali, the discovery of her belongings in a park 20 minutes from where she was last seen extends the crowdsourcing audience to the business nearby the park, any drivers with dash-cams passing by around the deduced time, any pedestrians and hikers, etc. Such audiences are crucial since, according to the authors, their memories could be triggered, perhaps even collectively, in remembering any detail.

At this point, I will preserve the suspense to the remaining fascinating read of the article, once again located here.