JOURNAL OF MEDICAL INTERNET RESEARCH Ayers et al Original Paper Quantifying Public Interest in Police Reforms by Mining Internet Search Data Following George Floyd's Death John W Ayers1, PhD; Benjamin M Althouse2, PhD; Adam Poliak3, PhD; Eric C Leas1, PhD; Alicia L Nobles1, PhD; Mark Dredze4, PhD; Davey Smith1, MD 1University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States 2Institute for Disease Modeling, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA, United States 3Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States 4Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States Corresponding Author: John W Ayers, PhD University of California San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive #333 CRSF La Jolla, CA, 92093 United States Phone: 1 619 371 1846 Email: [email protected] Abstract Background: The death of George Floyd while in police custody has resurfaced serious questions about police conduct that result in the deaths of unarmed persons. Objective: Data-driven strategies that identify and prioritize the public's needs may engender a public health response to improve policing. We assessed how internet searches indicative of interest in police reform changed after Mr Floyd's death. Methods: We monitored daily Google searches (per 10 million total searches) that included the terms ªpoliceº and ªreform(s)º (eg, ªreform the police,º ªbest police reforms,º etc) originating from the United States between January 1, 2010, through July 5, 2020. We also monitored searches containing the term ªpoliceº with ªtraining,º ªunion(s),º ªmilitarization,º or ªimmunityº as markers of interest in the corresponding reform topics. Results: The 41 days following Mr Floyd's death corresponded with the greatest number of police ªreform(s)º searches ever recorded, with 1,350,000 total searches nationally. Searches increased significantly in all 50 states and Washington DC. By reform topic, nationally there were 1,220,000 total searches for ªpoliceº and ªunion(s)º; 820,000 for ªtrainingº; 360,000 for ªimmunityº; and 72,000 for ªmilitarization.º In terms of searches for all policy topics by state, 33 states searched the most for ªtraining,º 16 for ªunion(s),º and 2 for ªimmunity.º States typically in the southeast had fewer queries related to any police reform topic than other states. States that had a greater percentage of votes for President Donald Trump during the 2016 election searched more often for police ªunion(s)º while states favoring Secretary Hillary Clinton searched more for police ªtraining.º Conclusions: The United States is at a historical juncture, with record interest in topics related to police reform with variability in search terms across states. Policy makers can respond to searches by considering the policies their constituencies are searching for online, notably police training and unions. Public health leaders can respond by engaging in the subject of policing and advocating for evidence-based policy reforms. (J Med Internet Res 2020;22(10):e22574) doi: 10.2196/22574 KEYWORDS policing; digital health, bioinformatics; public health; public interest; data mining; internet; search; trend; Google Trends http://www.jmir.org/2020/10/e22574/ J Med Internet Res 2020 | vol. 22 | iss. 10 | e22574 | p. 1 (page number not for citation purposes) XSL·FO RenderX JOURNAL OF MEDICAL INTERNET RESEARCH Ayers et al ªimmunityº), we forecasted a counterfactual scenario of Introduction expected search rates had Mr Floyd's death not occurred on The death of George Floyd at the hands of police has resurfaced May 25, 2020. The expected search rates were forecasted using serious questions about police conduct in the United States that an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model, has resulted in 1001 deaths of unarmed persons from 2013 selected by Hyndman and Khandakar's algorithm [17], fit to through 2019 [1]. Despite widespread protests, public interest the historical search rates using all available data January 1, in police reform following George Floyd's death has not been 2010, through May 24, 2020. The forecasted search rates were quantified. compared to observed search rates from May 25, 2020, through July 5, 2020, including computing the ratio of observed and Data-driven strategies that identify and prioritize the needs of expected search rates with bootstrap confidence intervals by the public may engender a public health response to improve day and cumulatively for the entire post period. policing [2,3]. We argue tracking changes in aggregate internet searches is one such strategy, where the content of searches Do Search Rates for Specific Police Reform Topics reflects the thoughts and behaviors of the public, the volume of Differ Across States? searches reflect their priority, and the location of the search First, to assess which states had the greatest number of searches reflects the community [4-6]. This strategy has informed rapid for any policy topic, we estimated the cumulative search rates public health responses across many domains, including by state for each policy topic, by summing the fraction of responses to demand for unproven therapies during the searches per 10 million for the entire post period (May 25, 2020, COVID-19 pandemic [7], demand for HIV testing following through July 5, 2020) and ranking states accordingly. Second, Charlie Sheen's public HIV+ disclosure [8], interest in sexual to identify which specific policy topics had the greater interest harassment prevention and training following the #MeToo within each state, we estimated each state©s total searches for movement [9], and increased suicidal ideation during the initial any reform topic, by scaling the cumulative search volumes for airing of Netflix's 13 Reasons Why drama [10], to name a few. each specific policy topic by the total cumulative search volume Moreover, once traditional data became availableÐin some for all policy topics and ranking states accordingly. For each cases years laterÐthese example findings were confirmed search query outcome, we contrasted any single state with the [11,12], underscoring the validity of mining search histories. mean for all states and compared any two single or group of Similarly, public health leaders can survey internet search trends states by these percentages. to rapidly detect public interest in and priorities for police reform. Does Political Culture Impact Searches for Police Reform Policy Topics? Herein, we assess public interest in police reforms by mining aggregate internet searches and discovering the types of reforms Given the political implications in policy making, we evaluated being searched for by the public, both on the national and US how political culture impacted searches for specific policy state level (including Washington DC). Such reforms include topics, by comparing cumulative search rates by state for each police training, police unions, police militarization, and the policy topic against their percent vote share for President Donald qualified immunity doctrine that reduces the liability police Trump during the 2016 election. While crude, the presidential officers face for potential misconduct [13]. To translate these percent vote share is often used as an indicator of the political trends into potential policy making, we quantified the police culture of states, reflecting the strength of support or opposition reforms most searched for by each state (including DC) and to conservative or liberal policies [18]. For each, we estimated how each state's political culture reflected by results from the the breakdown of searches for police reform policy topics by 2016 presidential election explained differences in searches. states voting for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump to evaluate any absolute relationships. Secondarily, we evaluated how more Methods support of Trump predicts searches for police reform policy topics by plotting states by their search volume post Mr Floyd's We monitored the fraction of daily Google searches (per 10 death and percent vote share for Trump, and estimated the best million searches) that included the terms ªpoliceº and fitting line including the slope of this line. All analyses were ªreform(s)º originating from the United States between January performed using R, version 3.5.1 (The R Project for Statistical 1, 2010, through July 5, 2020. This strategy would capture Computing). ªreform the police,º ªbest police reforms,º etc as markers for general interest in policing reforms. We also monitored searches Results containing the term ªpoliceº with ªtraining,º ªunion(s),º ªmilitarization,º or ªimmunity.º These searches were selected Internet Searches for Police ªReform(s)º because they have been frequently cited by experts as avenues The 41 days following Mr Floyd's death corresponded with the for reforms [14-16], and represent public prioritization of greatest number of police ªreform(s)º searches ever recorded, specific policing reform topics. Search rates were monitored with the highest daily fraction of all searches for ªreform(s)º both at the national and state (including DC) level. eclipsing the past high by over 150-fold (Figure 1). In absolute terms, this translated into about 1,350,000 total searches for Quantifying the Impact of Mr Floyd's Death police ªreform(s).º Using historical search rates for each outcome (ªpolice,º ªreform[s],º ªtraining,º ªunion[s],º ªmilitarization,º or http://www.jmir.org/2020/10/e22574/ J Med Internet Res 2020 | vol. 22 | iss. 10 | e22574 | p. 2 (page number not for citation purposes) XSL·FO RenderX JOURNAL OF MEDICAL INTERNET RESEARCH Ayers et al Figure 1. Internet searches for ªpoliceº and ªreform(s)º following the death of George Floyd. Queries included all searches with the terms ªpoliceº and ªreform(s).º Top panel shows the historic trends of reform searches in comparison to after Mr Floyd's death. Middle panels show the percent increases in searches after Mr Floyd's death (vertical dashed line is the day of the killing, May 25, 2020), and the bottom map shows the cumulative query fraction by state, including Washington DC, for the entire period following Mr Floyd's death (May 25, 2020, through July 5, 2020).