The document discusses analyzing the role of UK police on Twitter after 2011 summer riots, including scraping over 3,000 tweets from various London police Twitter accounts between June 1-28, 2012 related to the Olympics and extracting information on topics, hashtags, links and images posted. It outlines further planned analysis of the tweet content, police accounts in areas affected by riots, level of engagement with citizens, and unpacking of shortened links contained in tweets.

1. Police tweeting after the UK summer riots
Fearing the Olympics / what will it break?
Becoming crisis

2. Research Context
Alternative view of the Olympics
• Fear of the Olympics – Coming Crisis?
• What will break?
• The Internet?
• The Transport structure?
• The Electricity Grid?
• Terror Attack?
• (more) scandals revealed – budgets, tickets, torchbearers
Analysis of the role of the police on Twitter post riots

3. 18. It would be actively unhelpful to switch off social media
during times of widespread and serious disorder and we
strongly recommend that this does not happen. (Paragraph
78)
It is clear from the use forces made of social media to engage
with their communities during the riots that they are a
valuable resource, and the Government has no intention of
switching them off. They were also used by communities to
organise clean up operations in the aftermath of the riots.
Although social media were used by some to organise
disorder and criminality, it has been widely acknowledged in
many of the reports on the riots that a number of the forces
used social media extensively to engage with their
communities and provide reassurance.
The Metropolitan Police’s number of Twitter followers rose
from 4,500 before the riots to 42,000 afterwards, a figure
which seems to have been sustained. As early as 9 August,
Operation Withern’s gallery of images for identification had
Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of received 4 million hits.
State for the Home Department by Command of
Her Majesty - February 2012

4. Twitter handles
MPSBarkDag
MPSBarnet
MPSBexley
MPSBrent
MPSBromley
MPSCamden
metpoliceuk
MPSWestminster
MPSCroydon
EalingMPS
MPSEnfield
MPSGreenwich
MPSHackney
MPSHammFul
MPSHaringey
MPSHarrow
MPSHavering
MPSHillingdon
MPSHounslow
MPSIslington
MPSKenChel
MPSKingston
Plus: LambethMPS
MPSLewisham
@MetPoliceEvents(Updates from the Met Police regarding MPSMerton
demonstrations & events in London) MPSNewham
MPSRedbridge
@MPSOnTheStreet(An official MPS account giving an officer MPSRichmond
on the ground's view of events, operations and other MPSSouthwark
MPSSutton
policing activities in London) MPSTowerHam
@MPSDoI(Updates from the Metropolitan Police Service, MPSWForest
MPSWandsworth
Directorate of Information)

5. When did the accounts join Twitter?
Most London Borough Accounts joined in February 2012,
with a lot joining on the 27th and 28th of February.

6. Collecting the data
3322 tweets sent 1 – 28 June
Scraper by Jacopo Ottaviani
URL for the scraper: https://scraperwiki.com/scrapers/police_and_the_olympics_2012/

7. Number of tweets sent 1 – 28 June
*MPSHaringey missing (to be scraped)
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0

8. Extracting the text from the tweets
Olympic words manually highlighted + made a Wordle with DMI tool.

10. Extract the links (all the URLs)
A total of 1161 URLs were extracted. Most were shorted, mainly using t.co (Twitter)
Tried to unpack them using:
Didn’t work, manual unpacking and note taking (plus you still have the shortened
URL in case you want to retrace it.

11. Use of other social media platforms by the police, to take pictures for example
(Twitpic and flickr), plus additional information of Facebook. Also FaceWatch, to
identify criminals.

12. Extracting the hashtags
No tool for this currently
Hopefully coming soon
(Or use Google Refine?)

13. Extracting tweets mentioning
Olympics
Manual extraction of relevant tweets (Google Refine next time!)
• Tweets for torch (24)
• Tweets for Olympic (22)
• Tweets for Olympics (14)
• Tweets for gold (10)
Data for further analysis. For example:
‘RT @metpoliceuk: Officers have issued a warning
about fraudulent websites selling tickets for the
Olympics http://t.co/hdsbU9Sl’

14. Further analysis in next few days
• Content analysis of (all?) tweets / NLP work on the dataset
• Closer analysis of the profiles (linked to where rioting took place last year)
• Engagement - #askmetbosshashtag (did the Met engage with citizens?)
• Unpacking links – analysis of sites, images and so on.

15. Not a #failwhale in sight