Chapter 15 – Social media and its role for LEAs: Review and applications

Social media has become a major aspect of online activity, and thus an essential part of cybercrime and cyber terrorism-related operations. As LEA’s (law enforcement agencies) focus upon cybercrime and cyber terrorism threats increase, so does the requirement to consider the potential application of social media as a vital aspect of any cyber defense strategy. This chapter considers social media's role in society and the characteristics that influence the way people use it. A number of case study scenarios are presented to demonstrate the potential application of social media in combatting a variety of criminal threats including human trafficking, hostage situations, and other organized crime. Each scenario considers the potential impact of a number of example technologies such as text mining, NLP (natural language processing) and sentiment analysis supported by an understanding of the relevance of people's usage characteristics and behaviors within social media.