Twitter could be better at detecting riots than police

Twitter could identify violent activities, such as riots, well before the police is ever notified, according to a study by Cardiff University. Research shows that the advantage of social media could be of over an hour.

Researchers at Cardiff University analyzed approximately 1.6 million tweets related to the 2011 London riots, and found that in the London Borough of Enfield, computer systems could have detected reports of disorder from Twitter an hour and 23 minutes before the police was notified.

“In this research, we show that online social media are becoming ...