Urgent Invite - AFTER WOOLWICH: SOCIAL REACTIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

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The research will analyse social reactions to the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich on 22/05/13 using social media (SM) data. Such data uniquely enable the tracking of the evolution of public perceptions and sentiments in real-time as key events occur. The work will produce new insights into the social dynamics of collective responses to high profile violent crimes, alongside methodological innovations developing text-mining methods for rigorous social scientific analyses of SM. Using a case study design applying qualitative, quantitative and geo-spatial data analysis techniques, the project will illuminate the signal event, conflict escalation and de-escalation, influence and resilience dynamics that arise in the aftermath of a major crime. Specifically, the research will:1. Conduct exploratory research into the dynamics of how publics interpret and react to high profile crime events, and how such views evolve and shift over time. This reflects how SM data afford opportunities to ask new and different questions than were previously possible with more established social science methodologies.2. Develop new and prototype methods for social scientists to analyse SM in the future. This will involve the refinement of several social science based analytic frameworks and novel software 'apps' to operationalise and visualise these.3. Reflect upon the learning derived from the case study analysis to inform future strategies and agendas in terms of how social science responds to the challenges of 'big data'. The empirical data on the Rigby murder were collected as part of an initial test of the 'Sentinel' (Sentiment mining of Narratives using an Extremist Lexicon) tool - a research prototype text-mining application designed by an inter-disciplinary team of social and computer scientists as part of a European Commission funded project. When the Woolwich murder occurred, the team launched the tool to monitor SM sources and have continued to collect such material (over 10 million tweets and nearly 59000 other user-generated comments collected so far). However, analyses of these publicly available data were not part of the initial project's focus or funding. Accordingly, this application to the ESRC Urgent Priorities scheme has been prepared to enhance and make timely use of the data collected. The urgency relates to: - Time-limited opportunities to improve the data collected by following and unpacking hyperlinks embedded in user-generated comments (e.g. tweets), providing a 'richer', more nuanced picture of public reaction. This data capture needs completing before too many links are broken.- Funding would enable monitoring of the case through to the conclusion of the criminal justice process. Tracking the evolution of public opinion in detail and on an ongoing basis, from incident to post-trial, is not something accomplished before.- A significant policy impact need. Rapid research would provide an evidence-base to inform responses to any future incidents and community tensions. ACPO has provisionally agreed to provide a quantitative time stamped dataset of all hate crime incidents in England and Wales by type, for the recent period - enabling comparison of public opinion with known events in a continuous chronological series.The approach adopted involves some innovative emergent ideas about public reactions to crime, applying these to SM data and operationalising new methodologies. This will include: the Signal Crimes Perspective (Innes, 2004; forthcoming); Collins' (2012) model of the time-dynamics of conflict; and Sluka's (1990) work on the role of 'soft support' community opinion formation influencing the creation of operating 'spaces' for violent extremists. The key point being that timely and open-ended SM data, when harnessed by new informatics technologies and methodologies, enables social science to pose and answer new questions.