Spatial Analysis of Gunshot Reports on Twitter in Mexico City

Abstract

The quarantine and stay-at-home measures implemented by most governments significantly impacted the volume and distribution of crime, and already, a body of literature exists that focuses on the effects of lockdown on crime. However, the effects of lockdown on firearm violence have yet to be studied. Within this context, this study analyzes reports of gunshots in Mexico City registered on Twitter from October 2018 to 2019 (pre-COVID-19) and from October 2019 to 2020 (during COVID-19), using a combination of spatial (nearest neighbor ratio, Ripley’s K function and kernel estimation) and non-spatial (Fisher’s exact test) methods. The results indicate a spatial concentration of gunshot reports in Mexico City and a reduction in frequency of reports during the pandemic. While they show no change in the overall concentration of gunshots during lockdown, they do indicate an expansion in the patterns of spatial intensity (moving from the west to the center of the city). One possible explanation is the capacity of possible victims of firearm crimes in certain municipalities to comply with lockdown measures and thus avoid exposure to such crimes.

Policing Social Disorder and Broken Windows Theory: Spatial Evidence from the “Franeleros” Experience

“…From 1 January to 31 December 2019, the files contained 8246 auto part robberies, 6617 robberies of objects from the interior of an automobile, and 1409 intentional damage to vehicles. The pre-pandemic period was selected to avoid the effects that the COVID-19 health emergency had on crime patterns around the world [55][56][57][58] and in Mexico [59][60][61][62].…”

Design and analysis of tweet-based election models for the 2021 Mexican legislative election

“…Twitter data has been used to study a wide range of topics, including troll activity [18], cognitive reflection [19], digital trace data to study migration and migrants [20], expressed sentiment alterations during the COVID-19 pandemic [21,22], misinformation spread during earthquakes [23], and spatial analysis of gunshots reports [24]. In the context of politics, there has been focus on the influence of fake news [7,25], campaigning [8,9,26], echo chambers [27], polling [28], and elections [29].…”