Date of Award
5-2023
Degree Type
Honors College Thesis
Academic Program
Criminal Justice BA
Department
Criminal Justice
First Advisor
Dr. Joshua Hill, Ph.D.
Advisor Department
Criminal Justice
Abstract
The idea of defunding the police has been circulating on social media for the past few years. This thesis seeks to analyze what types of sources people use in conjunction with the #DefundthePolice hashtag to define their understanding of defunding the police. Using Twitter API to search for #DefundthePolice, Tweets were analyzed and rated based on the credibility of links embedded within each post. Each link was assigned a credibility rating of one through three, one meaning not credible, two meaning somewhat credible, and three meaning credible. Each link was classified into one of eight categories: news, statements, advertisements, advertisements/propaganda, U.S. Government Official, pictures, videos, and YouTube. Of the Tweets that were able to be given a credibility score, eight to ten percent of links included in the Tweets included credible sources.
Copyright
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Recommended Citation
Tilford, Isabel, "Legitimate and Deceptive Media: An Analysis of Sources used in Conjunction with #DefundingthePolice using Twitter API" (2023). Honors Theses. 913.
https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses/913