FiveThirtyEight
•86% Informative
Study: Police Facebook pages consistently overreport crimes by Black suspects relative to local arrests rates.
John Rappaport's team analyzed nearly 14,000 Facebook pages maintained by law enforcement agencies across the U.S. They found that Black suspects were described in 32 percent of posts but represented just 20 percent of arrestees.
A professor of criminology at the University of California, Irvine, says the study opens up a whole new direction in research.
He suspects that the nature of social media incentivizes police to seek traffic and “likes” as much as any other group or individual who is trying to build an audience.
The irony is that public communication through social media channels is often lauded as part of the best practices that improve transparency in policing.
VR Score
92
Informative language
94
Neutral language
52
Article tone
informal
Language
English
Language complexity
60
Offensive language
possibly offensive
Hate speech
not hateful
Attention-grabbing headline
not detected
Known propaganda techniques
not detected
Time-value
short-lived
External references
12
Source diversity
10
Affiliate links
no affiliate links