The Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles — it delivers smart mobility services. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter.
Social media monitoring and analytics can help city, state and national government agencies make faster and more informed decisions. Some of the decisions can be predictive, such as gauging public sentiment during the planning of a major public event like a parade, sporting event or even a royal wedding. With the right process and tools in place, some decisions can be made on the fly, such as during a natural disaster where responsive action is needed — think earthquakes, tornadoes, shootings or bombings.
Public safety is a major area where agencies, particularly law enforcement, are looking at the value of social media participation and monitoring despite complex issues like privacy intrusion and real-time effectiveness during an unfolding crisis. Publicly available data from social networks is being retrieved and applied by agencies to improve how they provide services to their citizens. In some cases, effective use of social media could mean cost savings and better resource deployment.
As demonstrated in countries like Egypt and Syria, governments worldwide are monitoring — and in some cases, shutting down — social media channels in attempts to control gain control of unfolding events. More recently, the unrest in the U.K. highlights the complexity of monitoring social media conversations and putting the information gathered in real-time to use.
Social Media and Control
Looking at the larger picture, are governments and law enforcement agencies violating individual rights by monitoring social media? According to Washington D.C. social media lawyer Bradley Shear, any user of social media should realize that everything he posts publicly online has the potential to be reviewed by others who may not be the intended readers — that includes governments and police departments.
“If you post something on a public Facebook Page, public Twitter account, public Google+ profile, you generally give up your right to privacy regarding the content that you have posted,” says Shear. “When I tweet or blog, I do so with the knowledge that my content may be viewed by anyone at any time who has access to the Internet.”
Some protection for individual privacy, at least in the United States, occurs when government wants to monitor or access a private social media account. In theory, the government must go through the proper legal channels to obtain access.
Shear explains that in the U.S., the fourth amendment of the Constitution guards against unreasonable searches and seizures.
“The legal test in the U.S. is: ‘Do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy?’ I believe a strong argument may be made that one has a reasonable expectation of privacy on social media pages that are not accessible by the general public,” says Shear.
What about a government going beyond just monitoring and deciding to shut down access to social media channels, either to avert a crisis or ostensibly to manage one? In the U.K., law enforcement agencies and government ministers are exploring these options.
Says Shear, “In the United States, a government that shuts down access to an electronic communications platform may be violating the First Amendment.” Barring access, he points out, could also have unintended consequences that jeopardize public safety.
Monitoring Strategically
Mike Alderson, a former U.K. police officer and director of Open Eye Communications Ltd. consults some of the U.K. police agencies that work with the social media monitoring provider Radian6, a Salesforce company. He says law enforcement organizations and agencies should look at their social media deployment from four main areas: Strategic, Operational/Tactical, Intel and Media.
As an example of Strategic use, Alderson explains that agencies can monitor to see if the services they’re providing are what people actually want.
“People are surveyed to death. Social media monitoring helps agencies to strategically understand what services are required,” he says.
Operationally or tactically, police units can aggregate, filter and analyze a social media stream in a given policing area and look for conversations ahead of planned events such as demonstrations. Analyzing what people are talking about can guide the effective deployment of services.
For intel, a police unit could identify key influencers to both glean and disseminate credible information. They could monitor the streams during the day of an event to make on-the-spot decisions and better manage resources on the ground. Then after an event, they could learn from the operation and assess the public’s feelings about what took place.
Without deeper analysis of recent events in the U.K., it’s not clear how much Twitter and Facebook played in anticipating civil unrest. On the surface, it appears that law enforcement was using it in the moment to reassure the public, provide them with information and help identify offenders, says Alderson. The platforms were also used by concerned citizens to get and provide help, via tags like #riotcleanup.
Social media can also reveal to law enforcement what information needs to be disseminated and when. Conversely, the police can incorporate updates from the media or citizen journalists to get a clearer picture of what is happening in places where they don’t yet have officers on the ground.
However, as the situation in the U.K. demonstrated, false information can also be disseminated rapidly through social networks, causing misdirection of police resources.
“A lot of police effort went into correcting that misdirection,” says Alderson. “One of the great advantages of forces using Twitter actively is that police do work to correct the misinformation. Some U.K. forces are more advanced in their social media monitoring and use than others.”
During the riots, all police forces saw an uptick of their Twitter followings. For example, in Nottinghamshire, their following rose from about 2,200 to more than 16,500, a 625% increase. In Debfordshire, they saw a 538% increase, and London’s Metropolitan Police saw a 674% increase.
Alderson’s firm assisted with the monitoring of the March 26 “March for the Alternative” In London, the fifth largest event of its kind in British history. As people were gearing up to protest austerity measures, law enforcement was able to monitor conversations on Twitter and other networks to take the temperature of public emotions to understand how best to meet the needs of the public in terms of safety. In the case of the March 26 protests, one police agency alone was dealing with 55,000 separate social media conversations.
“That’s a lot of data value, just on the day of a particular event,” says Alderson. “One of the big things is making sure your social media monitoring structure behind the platform is in place. How you triage conversations, how you identify ones that are significant. Do pre-planning if you can,” he adds. “Otherwise, you’re just watching noise go by.”
Monitoring for Public Safety
Queensland Police Service (QPS) began using Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and social media monitoring tools on a trial basis in mid-2010 in the wake of international events such as the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008. Analysis of the Mumbai attacks revealed to law enforcement worldwide that despite increased use of social and mobile communications by the public, most authorities lacked a presence, much less a system, to discern what posted information was credible.
When a series of floods affected 200,000 Queenslanders and three-quarters of the state declared a disaster area in mid-December 2010, QPS had systems in place to integrate social media usage and monitoring into their communications efforts.
“QPS recognized the need to establish an online presence before potential disaster struck, and be known as a credible source of information,” says James Kliemt, senior digital media officer of the media and public affairs branch at Queensland Police Service. “In an emergency, people go to the familiar, which is why QPS employed social media platforms and why it was so effective during the Queensland crises.”
Their case study, “Disaster Management and Social Media,” outlines how the QPS used both traditional and social media communications tools to deliver public safety information to both the media and the public.
The growth of the QPS social media followings was significant. Before the floods, their Facebook fans had grown to 8,000 in six months. Two weeks later, during the disaster, they had 18,000. Three days after that, they had 160,000. Their Twitter followers also grew by a factor of 10 over the same time period.
“Information was kept bite-sized and simple for the audience to understand during a crisis,” Kliemt explains. “Summaries of the major points from media conferences were made available immediately for those unable to watch the livestream.”
The QPS Facebook and Twitter accounts were also used to initiate the #mythbuster hashtag on posts crafted to debunk misinformation being disseminated in online and offline conversations. Actively addressing rumors as soon as they appeared to greatly reduced panic within the community.
A large user base was already established on Facebook and Twitter before the floods, says Kliemt, so it made sense to establish a QPS presence where citizens were present. Both sites offered robust platforms to not only distribute high volumes of potentially life-saving information, but to provide ongoing access to that information. While many government websites were crashing under the sheer weight of user traffic as citizens desperately sought updates and help, QPS could continue their communications without any technical downtime using social media.
After the floods, QPS anticipated a steep decline in followers, but the numbers and interactions have continued to grow to significantly broaden QPS’s reach — their Facebook following is now more than 215,000. The agency continues to use social media to help investigating officers source information on outstanding cases including missing persons, homicide investigations and child abduction alerts.
“Don’t wait for an emergency situation before implementing your social media profiles,” says Kliemt. “Give your agency and staff enough time to become familiar with your chosen platforms, and they will embrace these technologies as part of their regular duties.”
In terms of monitoring technology, surprisingly QPS doesn’t use robust analytics technology.
“We basically do everything manually. We have just started using Hyperalerts to give us daily digests of page activity,” says Kliemt, adding that “all our media staff are expected to monitor and participate in our social media channels as part of their normal duties.”
Series Supported by BMW i
The Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles; it delivers smart mobility services within and beyond the car. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter.
Are you an innovative entrepreneur? Submit your pitch to BMW i Ventures, a mobility and tech venture capital company.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, amphotora
More About: Global Innovation Series, law enforcement, social media monitoringFor more Social Media coverage:Follow Mashable Social Media on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Social Media channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:20:52 +0000 at http://mashable.com/2011/08/31/law-enforcement-social-media-use/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/08/31/law-enforcement-social-media-use/#comments
Social media monitoring and analytics can help city, state and national government agencies make faster and more informed decisions. Some of the decisions can be predictive, such as gauging public sentiment during the planning of a major public event like a parade, sporting event or even a royal wedding. With the right process and tools in place, some decisions can be made on the fly, such as during a natural disaster where responsive action is needed — think earthquakes, tornadoes, shootings or bombings.
Public safety is a major area where agencies, particularly law enforcement, are looking at the value of social media participation and monitoring despite complex issues like privacy intrusion and real-time effectiveness during an unfolding crisis. Publicly available data from social networks is being retrieved and applied by agencies to improve how they provide services to their citizens. In some cases, effective use of social media could mean cost savings and better resource deployment.
As demonstrated in countries like Egypt and Syria, governments worldwide are monitoring — and in some cases, shutting down — social media channels in attempts to control gain control of unfolding events. More recently, the unrest in the U.K. highlights the complexity of monitoring social media conversations and putting the information gathered in real-time to use.
Social Media and Control
Looking at the larger picture, are governments and law enforcement agencies violating individual rights by monitoring social media? According to Washington D.C. social media lawyer Bradley Shear, any user of social media should realize that everything he posts publicly online has the potential to be reviewed by others who may not be the intended readers — that includes governments and police departments.
“If you post something on a public Facebook Page, public Twitter account, public Google+ profile, you generally give up your right to privacy regarding the content that you have posted,” says Shear. “When I tweet or blog, I do so with the knowledge that my content may be viewed by anyone at any time who has access to the Internet.”
Some protection for individual privacy, at least in the United States, occurs when government wants to monitor or access a private social media account. In theory, the government must go through the proper legal channels to obtain access.
Shear explains that in the U.S., the fourth amendment of the Constitution guards against unreasonable searches and seizures.
“The legal test in the U.S. is: ‘Do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy?’ I believe a strong argument may be made that one has a reasonable expectation of privacy on social media pages that are not accessible by the general public,” says Shear.
What about a government going beyond just monitoring and deciding to shut down access to social media channels, either to avert a crisis or ostensibly to manage one? In the U.K., law enforcement agencies and government ministers are exploring these options.
Says Shear, “In the United States, a government that shuts down access to an electronic communications platform may be violating the First Amendment.” Barring access, he points out, could also have unintended consequences that jeopardize public safety.
Monitoring Strategically
Mike Alderson, a former U.K. police officer and director of Open Eye Communications Ltd. consults some of the U.K. police agencies that work with the social media monitoring provider Radian6, a Salesforce company. He says law enforcement organizations and agencies should look at their social media deployment from four main areas: Strategic, Operational/Tactical, Intel and Media.
As an example of Strategic use, Alderson explains that agencies can monitor to see if the services they’re providing are what people actually want.
“People are surveyed to death. Social media monitoring helps agencies to strategically understand what services are required,” he says.
Operationally or tactically, police units can aggregate, filter and analyze a social media stream in a given policing area and look for conversations ahead of planned events such as demonstrations. Analyzing what people are talking about can guide the effective deployment of services.
For intel, a police unit could identify key influencers to both glean and disseminate credible information. They could monitor the streams during the day of an event to make on-the-spot decisions and better manage resources on the ground. Then after an event, they could learn from the operation and assess the public’s feelings about what took place.
Without deeper analysis of recent events in the U.K., it’s not clear how much Twitter and Facebook played in anticipating civil unrest. On the surface, it appears that law enforcement was using it in the moment to reassure the public, provide them with information and help identify offenders, says Alderson. The platforms were also used by concerned citizens to get and provide help, via tags like #riotcleanup.
Social media can also reveal to law enforcement what information needs to be disseminated and when. Conversely, the police can incorporate updates from the media or citizen journalists to get a clearer picture of what is happening in places where they don’t yet have officers on the ground.
However, as the situation in the U.K. demonstrated, false information can also be disseminated rapidly through social networks, causing misdirection of police resources.
“A lot of police effort went into correcting that misdirection,” says Alderson. “One of the great advantages of forces using Twitter actively is that police do work to correct the misinformation. Some U.K. forces are more advanced in their social media monitoring and use than others.”
During the riots, all police forces saw an uptick of their Twitter followings. For example, in Nottinghamshire, their following rose from about 2,200 to more than 16,500, a 625% increase. In Debfordshire, they saw a 538% increase, and London’s Metropolitan Police saw a 674% increase.
Alderson’s firm assisted with the monitoring of the March 26 “March for the Alternative” In London, the fifth largest event of its kind in British history. As people were gearing up to protest austerity measures, law enforcement was able to monitor conversations on Twitter and other networks to take the temperature of public emotions to understand how best to meet the needs of the public in terms of safety. In the case of the March 26 protests, one police agency alone was dealing with 55,000 separate social media conversations.
“That’s a lot of data value, just on the day of a particular event,” says Alderson. “One of the big things is making sure your social media monitoring structure behind the platform is in place. How you triage conversations, how you identify ones that are significant. Do pre-planning if you can,” he adds. “Otherwise, you’re just watching noise go by.”
Monitoring for Public Safety
Queensland Police Service (QPS) began using Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and social media monitoring tools on a trial basis in mid-2010 in the wake of international events such as the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008. Analysis of the Mumbai attacks revealed to law enforcement worldwide that despite increased use of social and mobile communications by the public, most authorities lacked a presence, much less a system, to discern what posted information was credible.
When a series of floods affected 200,000 Queenslanders and three-quarters of the state declared a disaster area in mid-December 2010, QPS had systems in place to integrate social media usage and monitoring into their communications efforts.
“QPS recognized the need to establish an online presence before potential disaster struck, and be known as a credible source of information,” says James Kliemt, senior digital media officer of the media and public affairs branch at Queensland Police Service. “In an emergency, people go to the familiar, which is why QPS employed social media platforms and why it was so effective during the Queensland crises.”
Their case study, “Disaster Management and Social Media,” outlines how the QPS used both traditional and social media communications tools to deliver public safety information to both the media and the public.
The growth of the QPS social media followings was significant. Before the floods, their Facebook fans had grown to 8,000 in six months. Two weeks later, during the disaster, they had 18,000. Three days after that, they had 160,000. Their Twitter followers also grew by a factor of 10 over the same time period.
“Information was kept bite-sized and simple for the audience to understand during a crisis,” Kliemt explains. “Summaries of the major points from media conferences were made available immediately for those unable to watch the livestream.”
The QPS Facebook and Twitter accounts were also used to initiate the #mythbuster hashtag on posts crafted to debunk misinformation being disseminated in online and offline conversations. Actively addressing rumors as soon as they appeared to greatly reduced panic within the community.
A large user base was already established on Facebook and Twitter before the floods, says Kliemt, so it made sense to establish a QPS presence where citizens were present. Both sites offered robust platforms to not only distribute high volumes of potentially life-saving information, but to provide ongoing access to that information. While many government websites were crashing under the sheer weight of user traffic as citizens desperately sought updates and help, QPS could continue their communications without any technical downtime using social media.
After the floods, QPS anticipated a steep decline in followers, but the numbers and interactions have continued to grow to significantly broaden QPS’s reach — their Facebook following is now more than 215,000. The agency continues to use social media to help investigating officers source information on outstanding cases including missing persons, homicide investigations and child abduction alerts.
“Don’t wait for an emergency situation before implementing your social media profiles,” says Kliemt. “Give your agency and staff enough time to become familiar with your chosen platforms, and they will embrace these technologies as part of their regular duties.”
In terms of monitoring technology, surprisingly QPS doesn’t use robust analytics technology.
“We basically do everything manually. We have just started using Hyperalerts to give us daily digests of page activity,” says Kliemt, adding that “all our media staff are expected to monitor and participate in our social media channels as part of their normal duties.”
Series Supported by BMW i
The Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles; it delivers smart mobility services within and beyond the car. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter.
Are you an innovative entrepreneur? Submit your pitch to BMW i Ventures, a mobility and tech venture capital company.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, amphotora
More About: Global Innovation Series, law enforcement, social media monitoringFor more Social Media coverage:Follow Mashable Social Media on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Social Media channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:20:52 +0000 at http://mashable.com/2011/08/31/law-enforcement-social-media-use/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/08/31/law-enforcement-social-media-use/#comments