DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTERACTIVE

VISUA LIZA TION TOOL FOR SOCIAL MEDIA INFORMATION IN SUPPORT OF TACTICAL

CRIME ANALYSIS

F I N A L - Y E A R R E S E AR C H P R O J E C T

A N N E L I E S B R A N D S

Towards a Social Media Quick Scan

Contents

Introduction

Background

Method

Identification of needs & establishment of requirements

Design

Evaluation

Discussion

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

The problem

Information overload

Too much (complex) information (1)

Limited response time (2)

Limited processing capacity (3)

Research questions

How can visualization of social media information support detectives in their work?

How can the results of a quick scan of social media information best be visualized?

How can objective reasoning be supported in the visualization? (tunnel vision prevented)

Following from the previous question: How can the relevance and reliability of User-Generated Content be validated?

How can the visualization(s) be accessible for people with different technical expertise levels?

Background: Social media in police investigations

8 W-questions:

Who, what, where, when, whith what, why, in which way, why can we say this?

Objective reasoning

From data to intelligence

Reliability checks:

1. Provenance: Is this the original piece of content?

2. Source: Who uploaded the content?

3. Date: When was the content created?

4. Location: Where was the content created?

Background: Visualization

Visualization pipeline

“Overview, zoom & filter, details on demand”

Recall

Development of

an interactive visualization tool

for social media information

in support of tactical crime analysis

Method – Interaction Design

Method

Identify needs & requirements 11 interviews (2 female) with:

RTIC employees Detectives Social media investigation experts

Developing alternative designs Mock-ups

Building interactive versions Build interactive prototype of one case (one type of crime)

Evaluation 9 interviews (male) with the same police employees

Semi-structured List of statements

Insight goals

Find factual information on persons

Look into the network of friends

Insight in the online impact of a crime

Create a visual overview of the environment of the crime scene

Show the source and context of the information

View data in a timeline

Select and export relevant information

Establishment of requirements

Quickly access data from multiple sources

Connect data from multiple sources

Collaborate and share relevant information with colleagues

Interact with the data

Use case diagram

Design: characteristics

Web-based

Pinboard

Combining data from multiple sources

Design: prototype

HTML+CSS+Javascript Including several libraries for the visualizations

Data Twitter dataset from Jong&Dückers(2016)

Manually collected data

Design priorities: Focus on overview, calmness and usability

Embed the data when possible

Always show the source and link to the original content

Case: Tarik

Design: prototype

Zie jpgs

Design: prototype

Design: prototype

Design: prototype

Evaluation – interview results

“Clean”, “overview”, “easy”

Positive points: Panels with overview of the sources and the golden Ws

Pin to board and export

Maps

List of friend suggestions

Unclear: ‘Added data’-panel

How to add data from other sources?

Search in table

Filter buttons on Twitter page

Evaluation – interview results

Missing:

Twitter search queries

Filter on retweets

How to work with multiple cases

Suggestions:

Move the chat-panel to a pop-up

Filter buttons for witness terms

Sort the data on number of comments

Evaluation – Statements on insight goals

Evaluation - Usability

Mean SUS score of 80,1

(>68 is above average, 100 max)

Discussion 1/2

The chosen visualizations suit the insight goals

Focus on source and context information

Applicable for users with different expertise levels

Challenges for future development

Further implementation

Add data real-time?

Discussion 2/2

This project adds to research on developing visualization software

That can integrate multiple sources

And is accessible to users with different technical backgrounds, especially non-programmers

This project added to the knowledge on information overload in the police domain, the use of social media in police investigations and what technology is needed to support this.

Conclusion

The first big steps towards a Social Media Quick Scan

Great potential for supporting detectives in their work

Use social media information earlier on in police investigations

Promofilmpje

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn9uOuqW8L8