Forbes: UC Researchers Say Twitter Location Data Can Help Predict Crime
UC geography professor Lin Liu talks to Forbes about what we can learn from social media
University of Cincinnati geography professor Lin Liu spoke to Forbes about his research into social media and crime.
Liu and UC graduate student Minxuan Lan were co-authors of a study in the journal Sustainability that found a correlation between the geotagged posts from social media and police reports of petty theft. In fact, the correlation was stronger for social media than with U.S. census figures, which are used by law enforcement to determine municipal crime rates.
While the census measures where people reside, social media can tell researchers where people spend their waking hours.
"The spatio-temporal information embedded in tweets can be a potential asset to the crime pattern analysis," Liu told Forbes.
Read the full story here.
Featured image at top: Minxuan Lan poses in a geography computer lab. Photo/Joseph Fuqua II/UC Creative Services
UC graduate student Minxuan Lan checks his Twitter feed on campus. Photo/Joseph Fuqua II/UC Creative Services
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