In the U.S., Amazon’s Ring doorbell cameras and the related Neighbors social platform are gaining popularity. On the platform, users can share videos and photos of “suspicious people” with their neighbors and potentially also with police. For a radio item in the show "All Things Considered" on NPR.org, Anouk Mols, PhD candidate in the Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture (ERMeCC), was asked to comment on a similar phenomenon in the Netherlands: WhatsApp crime prevention.
How is sharing suspicious footage through social platforms affecting people and society? In the item, a user of the doorbell and platform shares her experiences. In addition, the general manager of the Neighbors platform explains how the app is also open to users of other video-doorbell equipment. In reaction, a privacy advocate explains the marketing strategy behind the open platform.
The journalist also discusses how similar initiatives take place. Here, Anouk Mols is cited about how, in the Netherlands, neighbors exchange warnings about suspicious activities and persons via WhatsApp. She highlights the ambivalent nature of these practices, as the use of a WhatsApp neighborhood crime prevention group can make citizens feel safer as well as more anxious.
Anouk Mols was contacted for her expertise in relation to her recent publication with Dr. Jason Pridmore: When Citizens Are “Actually Doing Police Work”: The Blurring of Boundaries in WhatsApp Neighbourhood Crime Prevention Groups in The Netherlands in the journal Surveillance & Society. You can read that publication here.
For the full radio item, where at 2:55 mins the research by Mols and Pridmore is highlighted, please visit this page on NPR.org.