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Quantifying Public Interest in Police Reforms by Mining Internet Search Data Following George Floyd’s Death
BACKGROUND: The death of George Floyd while in police custody has resurfaced serious questions about police conduct that result in the deaths of unarmed persons. OBJECTIVE: Data-driven strategies that identify and prioritize the public’s needs may engender a public health response to improve policin...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
JMIR Publications
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7641778/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33084578 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/22574 |
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author | Ayers, John W Althouse, Benjamin M Poliak, Adam Leas, Eric C Nobles, Alicia L Dredze, Mark Smith, Davey |
author_facet | Ayers, John W Althouse, Benjamin M Poliak, Adam Leas, Eric C Nobles, Alicia L Dredze, Mark Smith, Davey |
author_sort | Ayers, John W |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The death of George Floyd while in police custody has resurfaced serious questions about police conduct that result in the deaths of unarmed persons. OBJECTIVE: Data-driven strategies that identify and prioritize the public’s needs may engender a public health response to improve policing. We assessed how internet searches indicative of interest in police reform changed after Mr Floyd’s death. METHODS: We monitored daily Google searches (per 10 million total searches) that included the terms “police” and “reform(s)” (eg, “reform the police,” “best police reforms,” etc) originating from the United States between January 1, 2010, through July 5, 2020. We also monitored searches containing the term “police” with “training,” “union(s),” “militarization,” or “immunity” as markers of interest in the corresponding reform topics. RESULTS: The 41 days following Mr Floyd’s death corresponded with the greatest number of police “reform(s)” searches ever recorded, with 1,350,000 total searches nationally. Searches increased significantly in all 50 states and Washington DC. By reform topic, nationally there were 1,220,000 total searches for “police” and “union(s)”; 820,000 for “training”; 360,000 for “immunity”; and 72,000 for “militarization.” In terms of searches for all policy topics by state, 33 states searched the most for “training,” 16 for “union(s),” and 2 for “immunity.” States typically in the southeast had fewer queries related to any police reform topic than other states. States that had a greater percentage of votes for President Donald Trump during the 2016 election searched more often for police “union(s)” while states favoring Secretary Hillary Clinton searched more for police “training.” CONCLUSIONS: The United States is at a historical juncture, with record interest in topics related to police reform with variability in search terms across states. Policy makers can respond to searches by considering the policies their constituencies are searching for online, notably police training and unions. Public health leaders can respond by engaging in the subject of policing and advocating for evidence-based policy reforms. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7641778 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | JMIR Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-76417782020-11-16 Quantifying Public Interest in Police Reforms by Mining Internet Search Data Following George Floyd’s Death Ayers, John W Althouse, Benjamin M Poliak, Adam Leas, Eric C Nobles, Alicia L Dredze, Mark Smith, Davey J Med Internet Res Original Paper BACKGROUND: The death of George Floyd while in police custody has resurfaced serious questions about police conduct that result in the deaths of unarmed persons. OBJECTIVE: Data-driven strategies that identify and prioritize the public’s needs may engender a public health response to improve policing. We assessed how internet searches indicative of interest in police reform changed after Mr Floyd’s death. METHODS: We monitored daily Google searches (per 10 million total searches) that included the terms “police” and “reform(s)” (eg, “reform the police,” “best police reforms,” etc) originating from the United States between January 1, 2010, through July 5, 2020. We also monitored searches containing the term “police” with “training,” “union(s),” “militarization,” or “immunity” as markers of interest in the corresponding reform topics. RESULTS: The 41 days following Mr Floyd’s death corresponded with the greatest number of police “reform(s)” searches ever recorded, with 1,350,000 total searches nationally. Searches increased significantly in all 50 states and Washington DC. By reform topic, nationally there were 1,220,000 total searches for “police” and “union(s)”; 820,000 for “training”; 360,000 for “immunity”; and 72,000 for “militarization.” In terms of searches for all policy topics by state, 33 states searched the most for “training,” 16 for “union(s),” and 2 for “immunity.” States typically in the southeast had fewer queries related to any police reform topic than other states. States that had a greater percentage of votes for President Donald Trump during the 2016 election searched more often for police “union(s)” while states favoring Secretary Hillary Clinton searched more for police “training.” CONCLUSIONS: The United States is at a historical juncture, with record interest in topics related to police reform with variability in search terms across states. Policy makers can respond to searches by considering the policies their constituencies are searching for online, notably police training and unions. Public health leaders can respond by engaging in the subject of policing and advocating for evidence-based policy reforms. JMIR Publications 2020-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7641778/ /pubmed/33084578 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/22574 Text en ©John W Ayers, Benjamin M Althouse, Adam Poliak, Eric C Leas, Alicia L Nobles, Mark Dredze, Davey Smith. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 21.10.2020. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included. |
spellingShingle | Original Paper Ayers, John W Althouse, Benjamin M Poliak, Adam Leas, Eric C Nobles, Alicia L Dredze, Mark Smith, Davey Quantifying Public Interest in Police Reforms by Mining Internet Search Data Following George Floyd’s Death |
title | Quantifying Public Interest in Police Reforms by Mining Internet Search Data Following George Floyd’s Death |
title_full | Quantifying Public Interest in Police Reforms by Mining Internet Search Data Following George Floyd’s Death |
title_fullStr | Quantifying Public Interest in Police Reforms by Mining Internet Search Data Following George Floyd’s Death |
title_full_unstemmed | Quantifying Public Interest in Police Reforms by Mining Internet Search Data Following George Floyd’s Death |
title_short | Quantifying Public Interest in Police Reforms by Mining Internet Search Data Following George Floyd’s Death |
title_sort | quantifying public interest in police reforms by mining internet search data following george floyd’s death |
topic | Original Paper |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7641778/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33084578 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/22574 |
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