Introduction to Social Media Investigation: A Hands-on Approach

This book is an excellent introduction to social media investigation.By all means take advantage of the generous excerpts and Table of Contents in the preview area. But one note -- the preview shows images in color (from the digital edition) while images in the print edition are actually black and white. This is disappointing and detracts from the reading experience. The publisher really should make it clear to purchasers. But it shouldn't be a deal breaker. Those who want color can order the digital (i.e. Kindle) edition.This is the most complete examination of social media investigations I've seen and is packed with practical tips and examples for investigators who need to develop intelligence from social media sites. There are true life case studies to support described investigative techniques. And readers can join in and enjoy the online pursuit of the target "Malcom," who appears on many social network sites but is actually a fictional persona created by the author. In my initial pique about the black and white images in the print edition, I gave the book a lower rating than it deserves. That pique was directed at the publisher, not the author. I'm revising my rating accordingly.

Great book ! gives you multiple aspects to the newest field of investigations. It shows you what they are as well as what to do & how to do it. Even though this is a new field of investigations, it will enlighten you about it's pros & cons as well as the numerous different methods.

Nice book although there's a typo with the Pinterest chapter. In regard to the story on Paul Weiser. He was originally convicted of his crime in 2002 not 2012. He was brought back into court on other charges in 2014 as well.

I conduct social media investigations on insurance fraud claims. I found the book to be very helpful and thorough. It is entry level information but, still provided tips and insight to understand social media and how to investigate it. I would recommend this book..

Not my kind of thing. The book is more of a survey of services.

Not what I needed

Very helpful book when doing any skip tracing or judgment recovery work.

Had you Googled social media investigation a decade ago, you would have gotten a handful of responses. Today, it has become a key part of law enforcement, family law and more.Social media played predominantly in the terrible murder last week of journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward. Law enforcement poured over the social media profiles of the perpetrator.In Introduction to Social Media Investigation (Syngress 978-0128016565), author Jennifer Golbeck PhD has written a guide that shows how you can use the most popular social media channels as part of an investigation.While there are thousands of social media channels, the book focuses on the largest of them, namely: Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, Tumblr, Instagram and YouTube. For each of the channels, Golbeck provides a number of case studies and real world examples of how to perform an investigation.The book provides a basic approach to gleaning information from each of these channels. For most investigators, the reconnaissance work will not be so difficult given the amount of information people share on social media sites.The book is an introduction, and the author herself notes that most of the investigation stories detailed in the book are relatively simple. Namely that the target uses social media and the investigator collects the information. If it’s a popular site like Facebook or Twitter, and the person being investigated is somewhat chatty (which is often the case on these channels), the investigators job is not that difficult.But many investigations are much more complex and will require a deeper and more thorough approach. The book touches on that, but is primarily based on the more simple investigations. There are other tools that can be used in an investigation, such as reverse image searches, Social Searcher and more.Those looking for an introductory text on the topic, such as information security professionals, those in law enforcement, investigative journalists and more will find Introduction to Social Media Investigation a handy guide in which to start their investigative word.

excellent. Very informative