Panel 8B: Professional practice
Chair: Prof Maura Conway (Dublin City University & Swansea University)
Look Mom I’m On TV: Crowd-sourced policing, social media, and the prosecution of January 6 Capitol defendants Dr Michael Loadenthal (University of Cincinnati) Cameron Tiefenthaler (The Prosecution Project) Carter Langham (Regis University) Bella Tuffias-Mora (The Prosecution Project) [Co-authors: Sarah Spurrier (North Carolina State University), Hallie Filson (The Prosecution Project), Kristine Chapman (The Prosecution Project) & Samantha Fagone (University of Kentucky)] Abstract: Following the attack on the United States Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, law enforcement have arrested and charged more than 1,230 individuals. As evidence was released as to how these individuals were recognized, an unavoidable pattern emerged—many had been identified not by police or traditional investigative mechanisms, but by the public. In conjunction with traditional investigations, several crowd-sourced projects emerged (the most famous being Sedition Hunters), which sought the general public’s help to identify rioters. While such crowd-sourced policing did not emerge in the Capitol investigation, the indictment of the rioters brought this issue to the forefront. This study examines this investigative process through the lens of raditional media, electronic social media, and methods of policing. Through the unique data set offered by the Prosecution Project (tPP), and with the aid of a team of tPP researchers, we have studied these 1,230+ cases seeking to answer two central questions: 1. What role did crowd-sourced policing play in the identification and prosecution of January 6 defendants?, and 2. What can we learn about the defendants’ use of social media surrounding their January 6 activities and the role this played in the defendants’ prosecution?
Identity, Positionality and Researcher Harms Dr Elizabeth Pearson (Royal Holloway, University of London) [Co-author: Dr Ashley Mattheis (Dublin City University)]
Abstract: The subject of the possible harms to researchers of online terrorism and extremism has gained attention in recent years. In 2023, a new report, REASSURE, documented for the first time the harms online extremism and terrorism researchers can face, and how they seek to avoid them. This report made clear that academic institutions need to take responsibility and work with researchers to ensure that important online fieldwork on extremism and terrorism is as safe as possible. It also emphasised that the harms falling on terrorism researchers were not evenly distributed: some researchers, such as women, people of colour, and early career researchers (ECR) face disproportionate risk. This paper, using data gathered for REASSURE, focuses therefore on researcher identity, and how this matters in both the level and types of harms faced when studying online extremism and terrorism. It considers the silencing effects of racism and misogyny faced by women and people of colour in their research; and it considers the emotional implications that has not just for individuals, but for collective identities within the field. The paper explores the ways in which researchers with identities that are proximate to the topic of research are impacted by their work, and often targeted by extremists. The paper stresses the importance of protective institutional responses, and university safeguarding practices, in order to enable research by the most marginalized groups, on the issues affecting them, and to further the field of terrorism studies.
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