The ‘New’ Information Environment

Martin Innes

Do Seals Eat Penguins?

Signal Crimes • 10 yr programme of

fieldwork studies;• Change how people

think, feel & behave;• Connect specific

effects, to specific events;

• The everyday & catastrophic;

• Crime, disorder, homicides, C-T, rumours, social control.

The Public Understanding of Crime & Policing

• Analogy with the ‘public understanding of science’ to replace reliance on fear of crime:

1.How are public opinions, attitudes and sentiments about crime, disorder and social control formed?

2.Why do they form in this way?3.What implications does this approach have for managing

public perceptions and reactions more generally?

What public thinks more important for our model of policing than the case in the US: perceptual interventions; legitimacy; attitudes; public confidence; trust; satisfaction.

Key Ideas

• The new information environment & media ecology;

• The ‘golden hour’• Big data is lots of little data;• ‘Soft facts’ – rumours that lack provenance

but plausibly fill knowledge gaps;• ‘Spontaneous community mobilisation’ – no

formal organisational scaffold.

Complex Collective Reactions

Don’t Panic

We’re all doomed!

Would you mind awfully not doing that?

Thanks for Listening