Gun control activists have created a website that aims to harness social media and search trends to "predict" gun violence across the country.
The site will use information from Google search trends, Twitter, local news, and obituaries, combined with geo-location data, to track gun violence instances across America. From that information, the site will then predict future gun violence based on trends it identifies. The project was created by a number of gun control activists and researchers who collaborated at this year's South By Southwest conference.
Gun control activists praised the site, which is still in development but should launch to the public soon, as innovative and necessary. "The data’s there, or it can be there easily," Jessyca Dudley, program officer at the Joyce Foundation, told The Guardian. "The FBI has data. The police have data. But we’re forced to do this because no one is allowed to share it. So we started looking at unconventional data sources."
She went on to say that while police might use the predictive model to try and target individuals, the gun control activists weren't interested in using the site that way. "Law enforcement may want to do that," she told the publication. "We don’t."
Gun control activists said they did want the site and the data it gathers to be used by lawmakers when they decide whether or not to create new gun laws. "We’re looking to expand the digital phenotype," John Brownstein, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and member of the development team, told the paper. "The digital exhaust can provide insights."
Researchers reportedly had already identified a number of notable data points within social media and search data sets. The researchers said they identified a correlation in some regions between searches for the term "ammo" and gun deaths.