Whats The Deal With Websleuthing

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They engage in varying levels of amateur detective work including but notlimited to searching for information, uploading documents, images and videos, commenting,debating, theorising, analysing, identifying suspects and attempting to engage with law enforcement and other organisations and individuals connected to the cases.

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Websleuthing, cyber detective work and digital vigilantism are some of the terms used to describethis phenomenon.

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Websleuthing has made the headlines on several occasions, perhaps most notably in relationto the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Photographs taken by those at the site were postedonline and pored over by websleuths in an attempt to identify the individuals responsible. Reddit,the self-proclaimed ‘front page of the internet’ (Reddit, 2016)

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most notably a Find the Boston Bombers Subreddit,2 which led to the identificationof several individuals, none of whom were responsible for the atrocity. A different type of websleuthing is described by the journalist Deborah Halber (2014) who explores a group of websleuths cross-referencing missing persons’ cases with public records of unidentified bodies in anattempt to find matches.

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Websleuths also gather around cases that first come to their attentionvia mainstream media. Sizeable communities convened in the aftermath of the Serial podcast(Chicago Public Media and Glass, 2014) – which explored the conviction of Adnan Syed for the1999 murder of his former girlfriend Hae Min Lee – and the Netflix documentary Making aMurderer (Synthesis Films, 2015) – which cast doubt on the conviction of Steven Avery for the2005 killing of Theresa Halbach

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Any private citizen with aninterest in crime and a smartphone, laptop or tablet can now go online and connect with othersin crowdsourced amateur investigations

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Websleuthing is the embodiment of participatorymedia, where the lines between the producer, consumer and subject are blurred, there arefewer restrictions in relation to time and space and online activities have real world, embodiedconsequences (Bolter and Grusin, 1999; Bruns, 2008; Deuze, 2012; Jenkins, 2006; Ritzer andJurgenson, 2010).

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A range of motives drives these websleuths – being inspiredby television coverage of others engaged in such activities, having been victims themselves or wanting to protect children

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ormal policing boundaries around consent, accountability and justice that this would involve.Terrorist atrocities have also been gathering points for websleuths – an area explored by Nhan,Huey and Broll (2015). They use the term digilantism to refer to Reddit activity following theBoston Marathon bombing. They outline a range of activities, including searching for information,sharing and analysing photographs of suspects and drawing upon individual specialist knowledge. They also noted the digilantes’ failure to identify the correct suspects and the false accusation of several innocent people. Nhan, Huey and Broll note in both of their studies (Huey et al.,2013; Nhan et al., 2015) that relations between websleuths and law enforcement are antagonistic. Law enforcement do not trust websleuths, claim they hinder investigations and dismiss theirinformation as of little value. Websleuths defend their efforts and complain that they are rarelyacknowledged or credited. In conclusion, Nhan et al. argue that websleuths are undervalued –offering many pairs of eyes and ears, they can rapidly mobilise to gather information and draw ona wide range of individual assets and skills. Nhan et al. emphasise the importance of tackling lawenforcement mistrust through regulatory strategies to limit potential harms if websleuths’ poweris to be realised.

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One such researcher is Trottier (2014, 2016), who whilststill using the term vigilantism, acknowledges the broader social and cultural context. He definesdigital vigilantism as ‘a process where citizens are collectively offended by other citizen activity,and coordinate retaliation on mobile devices and social platforms’ (Trottier, 2016: 1)

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These points are particularly relevant for websleuthing as networked technologies have enhanced opportunities not only for people to consume cases but toparticipate in collective investigations and create their own representations. The loops aroundwebsleuthing continuously feed into the construction of our realities, connecting to broaderframeworks – or spirals – of culture and crime (Ferrell et al., 2008, 2015).

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Infotainment has long been woven into these spirals of culture and crime. This term describesrepresentations characterised by an intermingling of fact and fiction, imagined and real, combining both information and entertainment (Ferrell et al., 2008; Fishman and Cavender, 1998;Jewkes, 2015; Leishman and Mason, 2003; Parker, 2012; Surette, 1998)

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Audiences now have considerably more participatory opportunities when it comesto infotainment – they can post a comment on an online news article, tweet about a televisionprogramme using a hashtag or join one of the multiple online communities established to discussand debate particular cases

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They are able to produce their own critical or counter-representationseven if they have little in the way of formal media production training. They can investigate evenif they aren’t trained investigators.

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Infotainment can be defined as the marketing of edited, highly formatted information aboutthe world in entertainment media vehicles. The reality in infotainment is more about the realitywe wish for than the reality that exists. The feel with infotainment media is that you are learning the real facts about the world; the reality is that you are getting a highly stylized renditionof a narrow, edited slice of the world … infotainment combines aspects of news, entertainment and advertising under a single umbrella. (Surette, 2015: 19–20)

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True crime television later came to explicitly incorporate armchair sleuthing with the 1984launch of the BBC’s Crimewatch, followed by America’s Most Wanted and Police Camera Action!These shows brought real violent crime into living rooms, appealing for the public’s help and assuch, highlighting the role of private citizens in tackling crime (Jermyn, 2007). More recently, truecrime podcasts have become very popular – season one of Serial was the fastest podcast on iTunes 86 CRIME MEDIA CULTURE 14(1)to reach 5 million downloads (Vincent, 2014

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cribing the subsequent coverage and analysing the themes andperspectives emerging within it. News media representations of websleuthing are importantbecause they play a significant role in shaping public understandings of these activities (Surette,2015)

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The potential impact of websleuthing upon victims and secondary victims was also noted byarticles in our sample. This mostly related to intrusion in their personal lives and attempts tocontact them. One article referred to websleuths contacting the friends and families of suspectsthey were investigating, ‘via Facebook, sometimes angrily and other times just out of curiosity’(Monroe, 2016).

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Whilst the drive to sleuth is nothing new, stemming from a range of motives from fascination to victimisation, amateur detectives now have a range of networked tools at their disposal to realise thisdesire

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it’s only the illusion that what we do online is not as significant as what we do offline thatallows this to go on. Imagine if people were standing around in Boston pointing fingers atpeople in photographs and (roughly) accusing them of terrorism. (Patel, 2013)

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: fascination; immersion; feelings of proximity; the desire to participate in achieving the type of ending more commonly seen in fictionalised representations of crime; the prospect of discovering a new lead; thenaming and shaming of a suspect; and justice or ‘closure’.

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s. Whilst vigilantism isevident in some websleuth activity, websleuths are far more than simply vigilantes. They adapt,adopt and create online spaces as places to gather, engage in discussion, conduct research, buildcase repositories and host content.

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Whilstcriminal justice systems are increasingly encompassing online spaces in their appeals for information, this does not appear to be associated with better relationships with websleuths. Whilst criminal justice may draw upon information that websleuths provide, it seems that they often labelwebsleuths as problematic: doing more harm than good; opening rather than closing cases; lacking understanding of procedural constraints; harming the criminal justice process; and having thepotential to negatively affect suspects, victims and others affected by cases.

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done