Validating media-driven and crowdsourced police shooting data: a research note

Researchers have yet to explore the validity of ‘unofficial’ media-driven and crowdsourced police-involved killings data. This omission is important because unofficial data are touted as providing accurate counts and narratives pertaining to officer-involved shootings - at least relative to official...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ozkan, Turgut (Author)
Contributors: Worrall, John L. ; Zettler, Haley
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: [2018]
In: Journal of crime and justice
Year: 2018, Volume: 41, Issue: 3, Pages: 334-345
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
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Keywords:
Police killings
Civilian casualties
Crowdsourcing
Media
Murder
Description
Summary:Researchers have yet to explore the validity of ‘unofficial’ media-driven and crowdsourced police-involved killings data. This omission is important because unofficial data are touted as providing accurate counts and narratives pertaining to officer-involved shootings - at least relative to official data. To address this shortcoming, we compared the incidence of and details surrounding officer-involved killings in three unofficial data-sets (FatalEncounters.org, Deadspin, and the Washington Post) to officially collected data on officer-involved shootings from the city of Dallas. Reporting on the incidence of officer-involved killings was mostly consistent across data sources. Incident details varied across data sources, however, especially with respect to investigation outcomes.
ISSN:2158-9119
DOI:10.1080/0735648X.2017.1326831