Sedition Hunters: A Quantitative Study of the Crowdsourced Investigation into the 2021 U.S. Capitol Attack

TL;DR

This study analyzes the Sedition Hunters Twitter community to understand its focus, participant roles, and privacy concerns in crowdsourced investigations of the 2021 U.S. Capitol Attack.

Contribution

It provides a detailed case study of a crowdsourced online investigation community, highlighting its main topics, participant roles, and privacy issues.

Findings

Information sharing is the community's main focus.

Participants play important roles in the investigation network.

Privacy concerns have increased among community members.

Abstract

Social media platforms have enabled extremists to organize violent events, such as the 2021 U.S. Capitol Attack. Simultaneously, these platforms enable professional investigators and amateur sleuths to collaboratively collect and identify imagery of suspects with the goal of holding them accountable for their actions. Through a case study of Sedition Hunters, a Twitter community whose goal is to identify individuals who participated in the 2021 U.S. Capitol Attack, we explore what are the main topics or targets of the community, who participates in the community, and how. Using topic modeling, we find that information sharing is the main focus of the community. We also note an increase in awareness of privacy concerns. Furthermore, using social network analysis, we show how some participants played important roles in the community. Finally, we discuss implications for the content and structure of online crowdsourced investigations.