Beanie Carr’s Social Media in Investigations. A Wikipedia Adventure.

When I started the Wikipedia Project, I had never edited Wikipedia before, heck I didn’t even know you could edit it and make an account. I understood that people did it, I just never considered the fact that People could extend to me and my classmates. It’s not that I don’t believe myself qualified to edit it, I am a grad student after all. For whatever reason, I just didn’t consider the fact that regular people were the ones updating these pages, not some highly trained Wikipedia gurus. I suppose that might have to do with the similarities in structure and voice in most Wikipedia entries. When editing Wikipedia, You have to use a neutral tone and restrain from opinions and uncited sources. Additionally, Wikipedia has the same heading and subheading setup on every page which helps create the table of contents. This leads to them sounding and looking like they belong on the same page, which they do. Although anyone can edit Wikipedia, There is also a database of Wikipedia users who have been editing for a long time who are allowed to moderate and overwrite edits in order to keep them within Wikipedia standards. This well-kept source allows people from everywhere to collaborate on educating the world.

Originally, When given the list of topic possibilities I immediately wanted to choose graffiti for my contribution topic. I have always loved the art style and found it interesting how art can find a way to brighten up cities, even if it is illegal in most of them. I also wondered how some people managed to create masterpieces without being caught by police. I was excited to look into the differing laws surrounding graffiti, how they differed between cities, states and countries. I specifically wanted to look into how it was conveyed in the media. And if there was a connection between the punishments (if any) shown for the crime and the likeliness of it happening by people who watched the media. I wondered if the portrayal of the art style as criminal in most media might have an effect on the perceptions of graffiti as an art style. Ultimately, I looked into the graffiti Wikipedia page and found a lot of information about its development and its ties to hip-hop and POC culture, all things that were great but no mention of it being shown in the media. This led to me being unsure of the notability of this topic, which combined with my unsureness of where I could even put it in the existing article and a lack of sources for the subject. Ultimately, I realized I needed a more easily accessible and well researched topic. Graffiti in the media would have to be explored another time.

After this, I was unsure where to go from here. I couldn’t find anything on the list that stuck out to me as much as graffiti had. I decided desensitization or mean world syndrome both seemed do-able. Either one was something I had an interest in and found fascinating, but both were also slightly overdone in my opinion as well as choices other students had already been mulling over. It wasn’t until I was sitting in class and we began discussing police and social media that I drew the connection. Social media, and the way people used it and became so attached to it, has always fascinated me. That’s part of why I choose the social media Public Relations track for my undergrad. I decided I wanted to know how police used social media. More specifically, I wanted to know how police were able to use social media in their investigations. Could posting a night of under-aged drinking online actually be used against teenagers or were there laws in place preventing police from snooping into people’s personal lives via social media the way regular people might? This curiosity led me to my final topic decision. I pulled up the Wikipedia page for the “use of social network websites in investigations.” I was immediately met with a banner warning me of the datedness of the information, asking for help editing the page to reflect current events. I read through the page and found most of the sources and information were from 2004–2012 with one add-on from 2017 tacked on. Additionally, The page didn’t actually answer the question of how social media was used in investigations. Instead it just said that social networking sites were becoming more frequently used in investigations. Some of the listed sites were very much no longer in existence and needed to be removed. Twitter wasn’t even an option. Instead of informing people the general practices of police when using social media, the page consisted of a brief blurb saying police use those sites and then, in my opinion, an obnoxiously long list of specific incidents where police and/or university officials had used social media as evidence for investigations. A majority of these incidents were in the early 2000’s and seemed both overwhelming to look at and unnecessary if the page had simply explained what it was trying to say rather than listing a series of news examples. The idea that this outdated list was out of place as the main content of the page was reflected on the talk page where users commented that this wasn’t wikinews and the content should be updated. Finally, There was information on Facebook’s privacy policy which had been updated and no longer represented the truth which I removed.

My main contribution to this page was the segment titled “How police use social media” I did some digging and found three journals which looked into police practices when it comes to the use of social media by police, specifically when it comes to investigations. I felt that when looking for information about police and social media, this is the information people want to know about more than just a list of examples. It was so interesting to learn how social media helps police track big gatherings, looking into who will be there and using social media footage of riots to locate protesters. I learned they also participated in “Ghosting” where they would create profiles as attractive females to get on the friends list of people of interest in order to lurk on their account and keep track of them. Perhaps most interesting was how by doing this they can communicate interpretations of behaviors with other officers, such as a person having been more aggressive or flashing a new larger gun on social media. I also included police use of social media to find missing people. That study is based on information from a Canadian police force thus introducing a diversity of nations which was called for on the talk page. I feel like I learned so much about how police use social media when doing investigations and was happy to share that information with people who are looking for it. I made sure when using sources to rewrite the information in my own words in my notes (Mostly) and then write based off my notes to ensure I wasn’t breaking any of Wikipedia’s plagiarism guidelines.

In the end, I decided not to delete the list of examples on the page I edited. I just couldn’t find a good reason to remove it other than that I hated it. As far as I can tell, the ones I checked on are true sources which have to do with police using social media in investigations, even if they are old and excessive. I instead reorganized the page to be easier to understand. I deleted the Myspace and student government sections, both of which only had one example of investigations pertaining to them, and combined them with the larger list. I then moved the list to be the very bottom of the page so it was less in the way of everything. All in all, I think I made a decent contribution to a poorly organized, outdated page which didn’t directly explain the topic. I am happy to have been able to add to the knowledge of the world and hope my contributions are useful to someone who is interested in this topic.