Social media affects on the Criminal Justice System

As technology advanced over time, many positive and negative changes have had an outcome on these changes. When relating to the Criminal Justice System, social media has been used to exploit arrests, film criminal trials, have press releases on certain cases, send out amber alerts, and much more. Social media has allowed for people around the world to be continously updated on arrests, court case outcomes, and information on suspects. On the other hand, notfifying the public too early can effect big breaks in the case or risk getting valuable infomration leaked. We have to weigh out these options befire publishing any information on social media regarding the Judicial System.

To begin, the positives of having the Criminal Justice System digiitalized is giving the public access to crimes and criminals while the cases are still active. For example, as most of the world knows, the George Floyd case has broke the internet resulting in the Black Lives Matter campagin which was posted everywhere on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. According to Nevett, “He has been arrested more than 70 times since he started documenting the city’s police force, the NYPD, in the late 1990s. His use of video to expose police brutality has blazed a trail for the growing police accountability movement seen across the US today.” (2020) expressing the exposure of racisim in the police force. After the video was released, there have been many reforms such as defunding the police, and civil rights protests. Without the recording of the murder of George Floyd the Black Lives Matter campgain would not have bloomsed the way it did in advocating to put an end to racisim for good.

In opposition, the Black Lives Matter protest has had some negative effects because of the digital media usage. For example the vandalism and robbery of stores in NYC was televised and then happened again all over the world in California, Miami, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and many more places. It was aired all of the breaking in to high end fashion stores and no one was caught and no consequences were put into place leading for it to happen globally. According to Gruman, “The strain leads the person to engage in socially deviant behavior like crime to attain goods and social prestige.” (2016) conveying that their abnormal behavior was a reflection of their peers actions which was portrayed through media outlets. Social media increases behavior to gain a certain reaction out of people to follow, it also allows for people all across the world to access information about anything in instances. The Georgle Floyd case reached hundreds of millions of people in just days leading to a nationwide protest of the rights of African Americans.

Overall, there are positives and negatives to everything including digital media outlets. In relation to the Criminal Justice System, social media can aid the public in being kept up to date on arrests, court cases, missing children reports, and ways to stay vigilante. But, social media can also express harm by exploiting information before it can be released or leading for the outbreak of massive crime as seen in with the George Floyd protests. Depending on the exposure and reason for reporting a case online, there are ups and downs to both sides of media outlets and the Judicial System.

References

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., Coutts, L., Krieger, M. A., Chun-Yan, G. A., & Towson, S. M. J. (2016). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. In Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems (pp. 51–73). essay, SAGE.

Nevett, J. (2020, June 11). George Floyd: The personal cost of filming police brutality. BBC News. Retrieved March 2, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52942519

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