Digital Public Criminology in Australia and New Zealand: Results from a Mixed Methods Study of Criminologists’ Use of Social Media
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The University of Melbourne
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Deakin University Australia
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Deakin University Australia
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The University of Melbourne Australia
Abstract
The proliferation of social media in the ‘post-broadcast era’ has profoundly altered the terrain for researchers to produce public scholarship and engage with the public. To date, however, the impact of social media on public criminology has not been subject to empirical inquiry. Drawing from a dataset of 116 surveys and nine interviews, our mixed-methods study addresses this opening in the literature by examining how criminologists in Australia and New Zealand have employed social media to engage in public criminology. This article presents findings from surveys that examine the practices and perceptions of criminologists in relation to social media, and insights from an analysis that explores the political and logistical issues raised by respondents. These issues include the democratising potential of social media in criminological research, and its ability to provide representation for historically marginalised populations. Questions pertaining to ‘newsmaking criminology’ and the wider performance of ‘public criminology’ on social media are also addressed.
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Author Biographies
Mark A Wood is a Lecturer in criminology at the University of Melbourne. Most of his research falls within the sphere of digital criminology, examining informal justice, crime-watching, public criminology, networked offending and countersurveillance on social media. His first book, Antisocial Media: Crime-Watching in the Internet Age, was released by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017.
Dr Imogen Richards is a lecturer in criminology and a member of the Alfred Deakin Institute at Deakin University. She specialises in the areas of surveillance, counterterrorism, and social media, and has published on issues related to online extremism, with a focus on comparative and cross-disciplinary approaches to online criminological research. Her work has appeared in the International Journal of Cyber Criminology, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism, and elsewhere. Her broader research interests include the performance of security, theories of violence, and drugs and crime.