Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

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LEA usage scenarios for social media
media postings of passive, situational observers, enabling the early identification of 
illicit activities based upon the aggregation of weak indicators expressed via social 
media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Efforts at crowd-sourcing, for instance, for support in crime investigations or dur-
ing crises depend on the willingness of citizens to support and engage with LEAs 
on social media. This may not be a logical step for all citizens, as demonstrated by 
the variances in potential user characteristics outlined in the section “Features of 
Social Media Users and Use.” Services like Amber Alert (a US department of justice 
program aimed at increasing public awareness of missing persons) require a stable 
community that is available on a continuous basis. But how can LEAs attract and 
bind citizens to their social media presence?
A non-governmental organization in Kosovo, InternewsKosova together with the 
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) created an online platform (
www.
kallxo.com
) for citizens of Kosovo to report cases of corruption through social me-
dia, SMS and the web. One year after the launch of the platform, 900 cases have 
been reported and around 30 municipalities in Kosovo have placed an iFrame of the 
platform in their websites (United Nations Development Program, 2014). The UK 
released a public service (
http://www.police.uk
) showing crime statistics for every 
address in the country allowing UK citizens to view crime statistics about their local 
area (
Garbett et al., 2010
).
A recent study on police social media services with citizens in Czech Republic, 
Romania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the UK revealed that 
trust in police is one of the main deciding factors, of whether people are willing to 
use such services or not (
Bayerl et al., 2014
). In this case, LEAs are treated the same 
as individual users (e.g., 
Joinson et al., 2010
). Furthermore, the lack of knowledge 
and skills related to the use of Information Technology are restrictive factors in the 
use of social media for crime reporting by a significant proportion of the populous 
(
Garbett et al., 2010
). Also people want to be certain that their anonymity is secured 
when they report a crime, something that is not always possible or clear when con-
sidering social media. LEAs try to attract people to report information about a crime 
through financial rewards, but even in the case of social media many people are 
afraid of providing such information.
Yet, while trust is often created offline, LEAs can work on their presentation 
of social media services and their own behavior toward the citizens who use them. 
The acceptance of the virtual delivery of public services is linked to the following 
four aspects: expectations for the performance of the site, social presence (i.e., “the 
sense of being with each other”; 
Biocca et al., 2003
), social influences by relevant 
others, who think using the sites is positive, and computer anxiety. Especially affec-
tive aspects, and mostly social presence, are important when considering acceptance. 
This suggests that media that allow for immediate and personal communication 
that closely resemble face-to-face encounters are more readily adopted by citizens 

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