Understanding Decisions to Share Minor Public Safety Incidents on Twitter Through a Collective Action Theory Lens

Abstract

Social media feeds provide a lot of information that would be of great value to law enforcement. Previous research dedicated considerable attention to sharing large-scale public safety incidents on social media. However, little research focused on minor public safety incidents. According to collective action theory, rational people would not participate in a public good unless there are external incentives other than the benefit from the public good. In this research, the authors use this theory to test public safety as the public good and see if such incentives have an effect on people's decisions to share incidents. They utilize a survey of U.S. adults with a sample of 285 participants. In this research, they hypothesize a positive relationship between decisions to share and engage in public safety on social media and 1) incident location proximity, 2) relationship with the victim, and 3) coercion. Results show general support for the theory's assumptions.