A web-based system for reporting and creating awareness about social media threats and crime in Uganda

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Internet is increasingly becoming a significant tool for social, economic, and human rights development in Uganda and Africa at large. Average citizens, human rights activists, civil society organizations, media houses, and more recently, politicians and government institutions, have resorted to the use of various forms of social media platforms in particular Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter - for expression, association and information sharing. In countries such as Uganda, which is characterized by high rates of unemployment, wage inequality and poverty, social media crime is attractive, easy and cheap with the fact that anybody with access to the internet could become a social media perpetrator. Social media crimes cannot be sufficiently investigated using traditional methods of recording lengthy statements, visiting the scene of crime, submitting the file to the Resident State Attorney for perusal, compelling witnesses to court, obtaining expert opinions from computer experts and tracing for suspects. Furthermore, there is a deficiency in the numbers and capabilities of law enforcement officers to investigate computer related crimes since such occur randomly in any part of the country with access to the internet. The main objective of this project was to develop a web-based system for reporting and creating awareness about social media threats and crime in Uganda. The study followed an agile methodology which included: Systems Study, Systems Analysis and Design, systems implementation and finally systems testing and validation. Qualitative and quantitative data was collected from respondents through the use of questionnaires and Focus Group Discussions. The Information System was developed using open-source technologies namely: PHP and JavaScript running on MySQL database and the graphical user interface of the system running on HTML5 platform. As part of the case study, a total of 20 respondents were interviewed from law enforcement officers to investigate the needs of stakeholders of the proposed social media crime reporting and awareness system. The results show that implementation of the proposed system will solve the problem of social media crime awareness since it is able to integrate and merge data from different sources. Therefore, the web-based system for reporting and creating awareness about social media threats and crime will be one of the solutions to reduce the social media crimes and increase awareness about social media crime in Uganda.