TWITTER USE AND ITS IMPACT ON PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD BANK ROBBERIES IN JORDAN.

• Author: Alkhawaja, Linda

INTRODUCTION

After fifteen bank robberies were committed in Jordan between January and February 2018, social networks were flooded with comments from Jordanians expressing their attitudes and opinions about the incidents. Social media reactions to the robbery included mocking the incidents, supporting the robbers, showing sympathy toward the criminals, denouncing the robberies in general, or criticizing the Jordanian government for its failed economic policies (policies that these individuals stated were a cause of criminal behavior in Jordanian society). Amer Sartawi, the Jordanian Public Security spokesman, stated in an interview with Petra News Agency that Jordanians' reactions to the robbery incidents on social media were "unfortunate" as many were praising the robbers for their actions. (1)

The first robbery occurred in mid-January, 2018 and targeted a commercial bank in the Abdoun area of Amman. (2) This incident was followed by another bank robbery less than forty-eight hours later. Overall, fifteen bank robbery incidents occurred in the two weeks between January 22, 2018 and February 8, 2018. (3) These incidents were so unusual in Jordanian society that Brigadier General Fayez Qablan told the Al Jazeera news agency that, throughout his policing career, he had never dealt with such incidents of bank robberies in Jordan. (4) Jordan is famous for its low crime rates and safe, secure environment. (5)

In response to the incidents, different news agencies, including Al Jazeera, (6) Eramnews, (7) and Independent Arabia, (8) have reported that people in Jordan showed sympathy toward the bank robbers. For example, one of the headlines read "Satw musallah 'la bank fi 'mman... w 3sha'b yata'ataf m' 3'maliyya w yatamna laha 3najah [Bank robbery in Amman... the public sympathizes with the robber and wishes him success]." (9) However, it is reasonable to assume the presence of other attitudes and that the media has purposefully focused solely on sympathy. Therefore, this research attempted to identify the dominant attitudes expressed by Twitter users in Jordan. It aims to explore public attitude toward the robbery cases and reveal what socioeconomic factors may influence punitive attitudes in Jordan.

The role of social networks is an important element in shaping attitudes toward crime. (10) Twitter, as a form of social network, is relatively easy to access as, according to McCormick et al., "among the approximately 500 million currently registered Twitter users, approximately 88.2 percent are not protected, meaning that all published content is available for view to all web users." (11) Twitter data provide insights into the collective attitudes and behaviors of Jordanians Twitter users, especially when Twitter allows users to update their messages multiple times per day, meaning that a researcher can track opinions as they emerge and develop. Moreover, this data is considered voluntary information, which means that Twitter users have the freedom to participate and express their attitudes toward the issue or not. In this regard, Rene D. Flores, a professor of sociology, affirms that Twitter provides information about peoples beliefs and attitudes toward an issue. (12)

Bank robbery is a significant social and economic problem and is classified as a violent crime in every society. (13) The considerable frequency of bank robbery incidents in Jordan that occurred in mid- January imposes a substantial burden on the banking industry. These crimes disrupting a bank's business, threaten employees and customers' safety, damage a bank's physical property, and create pressure on banks to invest in security devices. (14) Additionally, the judiciary system in Jordan stated that the crime ignites fear among citizens and workers in the banking sector and, thus, banks need more effective security systems to stop or minimize these crimes. (15)

This study offers the reasoning for encouraging punitive attitudes toward bank robbers in Jordan and favorable attitudes toward the Jordanian governmental processes such as policing, judiciary systems, and legal systems to support public safety. By doing so, the public will be encouraged to respect public safety systems, which will, in turn, increase security and more effectively control crime. (16) A lack of public respect for safety systems, therefore, is a cause for concern. This study therefore thoroughly investigates public attitudes on Twitter toward bank robbery crimes as well as the factors which increase the likelihood of these crimes in Jordan. It aims to explore public attitude toward the robbery cases and reveal what socio-economic factors may influence punitive attitudes in Jordan. It also investigates the role of Twitter as a social media network in effecting the public's reaction toward bank robberies in Jordan.

This research is considered a top research priority in a report by the Higher Council for Science and Technology in Jordan, (17) which determines the scientific research priorities in Jordan for the following decade. Studying the influence of social media on how individuals perceive social violence is a top research priority. Authorities hope that a better understanding of this relationship will contribute to solutions for numerous problems in Jordan and, by extension, improve national economic, social, and cultural factors in the country.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Given the importance of public attitudes toward crime, there is a considerable increase in research that examines this issue. (18) Attitude is defined as viewing an issue or a phenomenon either positively or negatively, (19) or as a "psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor." (20) Public attitudes are interpreted by collecting peoples opinions, beliefs, and attitudes about concrete issues. These attitudes are significantly influenced by social media, which has a powerful impact on the construction of public belief and attitudes and, thus, on social change. (21)

For example, Kostakos examined how non-discursive behavioral data can be used as a proxy for studying public perceptions of serious crime. (22) The data was collected on three conversational topics: organized crime, the mafia, and terrorism, and gathered from Google Trends and Twitter. A total of 540,000 tweets containing three alterative spellings of keywords (mafia, organized crime, and terrorism) were initially collected from Twitter's API and entered into a database. To analyze the data, Kostakos used "discourse production" as an analytical metaphor, to look at the time series of micro-narratives published on Twitter. He assumed that the way people express information denotes how they perceive the subject in question. He concludes that there are marked similarities and differences in people's behaviors and perceptions.

Social cognitive theory is widely employed in studies that examine attitudes or behaviors triggered by mass media. (23) The theory itself is a communication theory that explains how humans learn behavior through imitation and how behavioral change is affected by internal and external influences. It reveals the psychosocial mechanisms of how communication influences human thoughts and actions. In this regard, Ngonso, Egielewa, and Temiloluwa state that social cognitive theory can explain the influence of Twitter on behavior and opinions since environmental factors have a significant impact on cognitive development. (24)

It is worth mentioning that some empirical studies applied public sphere theory, first introduced by the German sociologist Jurgen Habermas, to examine the formation of public opinions on social media networks. Habermas's public sphere is "a network for communicating information and points of view" in which "the streams of communication are, in the process, filtered and synthesized in such a way that they coalesce into bundles of topically specified public opinions." (25) The theory identifies these arenas of social life either in a physical form, such as a cafe, or a non-physical form, such as the internet, where individuals can communicate freely and discuss social problems. (26) Although it aims to discuss major issues of social and political problems that influence decisionmaking processes affecting the individuals life, "national and international laws, and the well-being of the global community," (27) and it also succeeds in offering useful insights into the formation of public opinion, we cannot consider it as relevant to this research. This is because a sphere mediates between individuals and government; this centers on the idea of participating democracy and how public opinion can influence political action and reform the messages of authority. In this regard, Habermas affirms that in a public sphere, "private individuals assemble to form a public body. They then behave neither like business or professional people transacting private affairs nor like members of a constitutional order subject to the legal constraints of a state bureaucracy." (28) Habermas's theory is mainly interested in political deliberation through social organizations, trade unions, etc. (29) As the aim of this research is to examine how social networks, particularly Twitter, influence people's attitudes toward crime in Jordan and discover the reasons behind their punitive attitudes, public sphere theory is not relevant to this research.

STIGMA OR SYMPATHY ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Social network platforms, such as Twitter, are in a period of rapid evolution. One hundred twenty-six million users use the platform every day. (30) Many studies have analyzed the contents of online social networks to monitor and understand peoples' behaviors using social cognitive theory as their theoretical framework. For example, Ngonso et al. (31) used social cognitive theory to examine the influence of social media platforms on the cognitive development of Nigerian youths, focusing...