Profiles or Micro-places? Cyber-place Patterns of Hatespeech on Twitter

• In Event: Technology and Crime: A Routine Activities Perspective on Cyber and Online Criminal Behavior

Abstract

Cybercrime has received limited attention from environmental criminologists. Considering the contributions of environmental criminology, it is important to highlight that cyberspace and physical spaces differ in a number of important ways. As a consequence, it may be necessary to re-think some of the concepts and paradigms of environmental criminology to understand crime in this space. While the concept of place and space have traditionally been used to refer to specific locations in physical space, they can also be used to refer to discrete nodes or areas of activity on the internet where one is not physically located but can nevertheless act. The cybernetic environment provides signals, or indicators, that can be used to identify, offenders and suitable targets or victims. The Paris attacks was a disruptive event that generated an important public reaction in social networks, and created the opportunity to study the phenomenon of violent communication and hate messages in Twitter in cyber space. In the days after the attack, a sample of 259.333 tweets was collected. This study employs data to identify environmental variables as “screen_name”, “description” and others. The results show that events are followed by communications that show environmental patterns clearly identifiable.

Author

• Fernando Miró Llinares, CRIMINA Research Center for the Study and Prevention of Crime (Miguel Hernández University)