Digilantism
An Analysis of Crowdsourcing and the Boston Marathon Bombings
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8402385 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Johnny Nhan (0009-0007-4819-910X), Laura Huey (0000-0003-2508-9542), Ryan Broll (0000-0003-2168-7051) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Pages | azv118 |
| Publication date | 2015-12-06 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Criminology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0955 • E-ISSN: 1464-3529 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/bjc/azv118 |
| OpenAlex | W2255183713 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 42 |
| References cited | 17 |
This paper explores the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing incident and how members of the general public, through the online community Reddit, attempted to provide assistance to law enforcement through conducting their own parallel investigations. As we document through an analysis of user posts, Reddit members shared information about the investigation, searched for information that would identify the perpetrators and, in some cases, drew on their own expert knowledge to uncover clues concerning key aspects of the attack. Although it is the case that the Reddit cyber-sleuths’ did not ultimately solve this case, or provide significant assistance to the police investigation, their actions suggest the potential role the public could play within security networks.
Computer security · Criminology · Crowdsourcing · Enforcement · Internet privacy · Key (lock) · Law enforcement · Political science · Public relations · Sociology · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Cybercrime and Law Enforcement Studies · Engineering · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Law · Stalking, Cyberstalking, and Harassment
Violence and Trolling on Social Media
‘I will live by my own policies. I will sleep with a clear conscience. I will sleep in peace.’
Archiving the Insurrection
The Vibes Are Off
Social media and policing
Citizen-led digital policing and democratic norms
Technologies of the YouTuber self
The many shades of digital vigilantism. A typology of online self-justice
Denunciation and doxing
What’s the deal with ‘websleuthing’? News media representations of amateur detectives in networked spaces
Representations of environmental protest on the ground and in the cloud
Digilantism, discrimination, and punitive attitudes
Utilizing Social Media for Information Dispersal during Local Disasters
Managerial approaches to mitigate police professionals’ online harms in the United Kingdom
Citizen-Led Justice in Post-Communist Russia
Crowdsourced Countersurveillance
Using crowdsourcing for a safer society
Humanitarian humor, digilantism, and the dilemmas of representing volunteer tourism on social media
Norm enforcement on and of Reddit
‘Not your personal army!’ Investigating the organizing property of retributive vigilantism in a Reddit collective of websleuths
Counter-Discourse Activism on Social Media
The acquisition of legitimacy for civilian policing
Seeking Justice on the Web
Moral emotions, good moral panics, social regulation, and online public shaming
(Online) public denunciation, public incivilities and offence
Impoliteness and morality as instruments of destructive informal social control in online harassment targeting Swedish journalists
Harnessing social and collaborative tools in digital disaster response work
Paedophile Hunters’, Criminal Procedure, and Fundamental Human Rights
Dark Fandoms
Pedophile Hunters and Performing Masculinities Online
Islamic vigilantism and women in social media
Mandevillian intelligence
The crafting of an online police métier. The case of Norwegian online police patrols
Introducing Vigilant Audiences
Mandevillian Intelligence
Contextualizing the emerging and contested role of sleuths in the science monitoring system
Law Enforcement and the Public
Understanding Audience Emotional Needs in Crisis Journalism
Contesting the Vulgar Hanmai Performance from Kuaishou
‘Make them famous’
A commentary on the potential impact of online communities and crime-related media on the criminal justice system
Citizen co‐production of cyber security
Policing the Risk Society
Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace
What Are the Police Doing on Twitter? Social Media, the Police and the Public
Cybercrime
Surfing the Silk Road’
Silk Road’, the virtual drug marketplace
Uppity civilians’ and ‘cyber-vigilantes’
Policing diversity in the digital age
Security in the age of networks
Moral Conviction
| Unique citing works | 42 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4,2 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2026 (11) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |