In response to our post two weeks ago identifying widespread social media abuse by jurors that could quite possibly lead to mistrials, a frightened prosecutor and others have inquired about how exactly juror’s social media data should be collected and what the various techniques are. So this follow-up post discusses the mechanics of proactively monitoring jurors that are both empaneled and potential members of your pool.
First and foremost, it is important to understand what not to do. Do not fire up Twitter.com and start following jurors. They will receive a notice that they’re being followed, which is improper under various legal ethics rules. Also, it is not effective technically, as you cannot access or search past tweets very effectively (which are often just as important as ones in real time), and it is very difficult to monitor up to several dozen jurors in your pool.
The right software will allow you to employ several techniques and methods, which are most effective when used in conjunction to comprehensively and ethically search for all publicly available juror social media.
The first method is to set a geo-fence around the courthouse and immediate area. This will collect tweets and Instagram posts in real time, as well as going back several days if needed, to collect any tweet that is geo-located in that area. Here is an example of such an effort:
Another advantage of this method is that it will capture any geo-located social media posts by not only jurors at the courthouse but also by opposing counsel or witnesses, which happens more often than you would think. Expert witnesses in particular can be prolific on social media as they promote their services and their personal brand. They also often Tweet and share approvingly links to industry articles and blog articles, which can then be considered to be part of their opinion record.
The second method is to set keywords such as #juryduty or “jury duty” across the public feed of social media sites. This will cast a wider net, returning posts from all over the country if not the world. But with the right tools you can quickly be able to filter out the ones that are within your geographical location. This will also capture posts that are not Geotagged by the user. If your case has any media attention, even just locally or within industry media verticals, it is a very good idea to set up keywords that can identify any mention of your case in public feeds.
And just for fun, here are the top 5 controversial juror posts from just the past few days:
And finally, once you have identified an impaneled juror or a member of the potential pool, and have their social media profile names, you can quickly and anonymously collect all their past and ongoing public social media content through special software such as X1 Social Discovery. This also has the advantage of instantaneous and unified search across all available social media streams from multiple jurors. You also can set up email alerts so that if a juror or other person of interest posts anything, you will immediately be alerted to that post. This is also an effective technique when following opposing counsel or key witnesses. And it’s often a good idea to your monitor your own clients as well.
For more information about how to conduct effective social medial investigations, please contact us, or request a free demo version of X1 Social Discovery.