The internet, smartphones and social media have become tools for citizens to perform activities that fall within the range of police work and the work of other organisations dealing with public security. Like modern Sherlock Holmes citizens assist the police and go beyond. They report on crimes,…
Detectives perceive an information overload in using social media data in police investigations, because of the abundance of available information, limitations in human processing capacity and problems in human-machine interaction. This results in a possible loss of relevant information that is…
Crowdsourcing and advertisement to solve crimes I’m a longtime fan of detective shows. I read true crime books even though they keep me awake at night. And of course, I’ve never missed an episode of the podcast Serial. Even so, I never expected to find myself researching branded content in a…
The idealistic notion of an army of smart volunteers taking to the Internet to help solve crimes suffered a serious knock last year. That’s when cocky amateur detectives at Reddit.com took it upon themselves to scrutinize photos snapped just before the Boston Marathon bombing in search of likely…
