Watchful Citizens: Policing from Below and Digital Vigilantism
Abstract
Through a conceptual and geographical tour informed by case studies, this special issue provides a fine-grained contribution on digital vigilantism that brings a more detailed portrait of the participants, contents and contexts of digital vigilantism. Further work remains to be conducted, and questions remain open, such as the issue of the audiences of digital vigilantism audience (Trottier et al., forthcoming). In the meantime, we hope that this special issue constitutes a preliminary attempt that will generate interest among media, communication, political science, sociology, anthropology and criminology scholars to further develop knowledge on a growing social control phenomenon that has the capacity to dramatically influence relations and trust between social, cultural, religious and political communities.