Researchers use Twitter to predict certain crimes by reading geo-tags
Data about locations and actions can point to greater likelihood of certain offences
Hidden in the Twittersphere are nuggets of information that could prove useful to crime fighters - even before a crime has been committed.
Researchers at the University of Virginia in the United States demonstrated tweets could predict certain kinds of crimes if the correct analysis is applied.
A research paper published in the scientific journal Decision Support Systems last month said the analysis of geo-tagged tweets could be useful in predicting 19 to 25 kinds of crimes, especially for offences such as stalking, thefts and certain kinds of assault.
The results are surprising, especially when one considers that people rarely tweet about crimes directly, said lead researcher Matthew Gerber of the university's Predictive Technology Lab.
Gerber said even tweets that have no direct link to crimes may contain information about activities often associated with them.
"What people are tweeting about are their routine activities," Gerber said. "Those routine activities take them into environments where crime is likely to happen.
"So if I tweet about getting drunk tonight, and a lot of people are talking about getting drunk, we know there are certain crimes associated with those things that produce crimes. It's indirect."