In Ecuador, insecurity and crime address a space that generates a lot of commotion in social networks. The data provided by the governments of the nations is not contrasted with what happens in public opinion. Today, information is very sensitive thanks to the use of social networks, where it is sought through a data analytics tool to measure the perception of insecurity of citizens. Based on the metadata ofered by the Twitter API, we collect this information through an algorithm based on natural language processing (NLP) using Python, we generate a statistical report to understand the context of citizen perception. The results show that there is a high correlation of security factors such as theft, corruption, crime at the regional and territorial level, afecting the cultural, political and economic development of cities and countries.
Social media allows users to create a profile, navigate, connect, and communicate with other
users through private or public messaging [
Information on the social network Twitter is abundant and available, as well as giving rise
to fresh opinions on current contexts [
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news, opinions and very commonly controversial topics to generate a representation of the
current perception of people [
This research starts by categorizing crime, violence and delinquency as synonymous words
that afect citizen security, words that indicate a deviation in the behavior of individuals within
a society as well as the violation of established rules and codes [
Insecurity in Ecuador is a social problem that aflicts all its citizens. There are diferent forms of citizen insecurity that surround the country. Criminal events are internalized by not obeying legal and moral norms. Exposure to the use of violence generates an expansion of criminal acts as a way of solving the problems that society may be going through.
In the last 5 years, they have focused mainly on the number of robberies and homicides. According to data reported by the Ministry of Government on its information portal the six months statistic can be perceived in the last 5 years. The accuracy presented in Figure 1 allows visualizing this evolution of incidents which show that between 2021 and 2022 there have been a greater number of intentional homicides. However, the reported data is usually not updated. For example, the State Attorney General’s Ofice which receives complaints about events of this type, filed a last report of homicides and robberies for the period of "January-November 2021".
The impact of the insecurity crisis is due to the deterioration of the quality of life, this type
of dificulties gives a new perception of the current state of security by the victims who face
a transformation of habits and in their daily routines in order to avoid being involved in a
dangerous situation [
Insecurity is associated with fear and concern, mainly afecting the calm for a citizen to
function smoothly within a society. Fear of crime and feelings of insecurity regarding one’s
environment have an impact on the quality of life of citizens, especially when feelings of fear
become excessive with consequences that can lead to health problems, as it is argued that
general anxiety is significantly related to fear of crime [
The perception of security is a variable that subjectively indicates the concern among citizens
since it is seeking to measure the fear of danger that Ecuadorians feel day to day. But beyond
perceptions, there is no clarity on the existence of tools or strategies to follow to reduce
and control insecurity. This data can give citizens a certain notion of security about what is
happening in the country [
However, this does not invalidate the evident increase in the number of crimes, which
generates a progression of the perception of insecurity with respect to victimization. Ecuador
carried out a single survey on the perception of insecurity at the national level in 2011. This data
by not being updated causes numerous unknowns about the current levels of victimization and
generates distrust in public institutions in charge of security, such as the Ecuadorian police [
How can we measure the perception of security in the country with available resources?
Currently there is a lack of a national methodology for measuring the perception of insecurity
through the use of information on social networks. The content that travels on social networks
afects directly or indirectly the perception that people have about a wide variety of topics.
Although this information is usually not verified, it could exert a change in said perception
through opinions. The intangible social construction that has been created within the use of
social networks defines keywords about the collective experience. In this case, around numerous
violent acts, where citizens manage to specify textually its broadest meaning in terms of their
perception, since social networks are a space where human behavior and free will take place
in real time, becoming a rather convenient to talk about concerns [
Twitter is a social network where users share based on subjectivity, and transmit human
habits by capturing and perceiving opinions. This information can be extracted from the Twitter
API data access service to perform data analysis [
Due to the need for a tool capable of measuring the efects of concern in citizens, this study proposes the extraction, and analysis of citizen perception variables using the Twitter social network as the information base. Daily tweets will be analyzed after 11 days, through filtering appropriate of data where key words of insecurity such as robbery and homicide are taken into account, which are contrasted through a survey of free expression on insecurity. These data are processed and analyzed statistically, at the national and regional levels with the most important cities in Ecuador (Guayaquil and Quito). A correlation analysis was carried out at the regional level with the most important cities in the country, and high rates of crime in Guayaquil and corruption in Quito and Guayaquil generated by social networks were detected.
Initially, a survey of 200 respondents was conducted to determine the keywords that are highly influential in the colloquial language, with the aim of measuring their concept of insecurity. The compilation of the obtained words that are shown in Table 1 will determine the search criteria within the algorithm carried out in Python.
For the collection of the Twitter data, the words that were found most frequently within a
data set resulting from the survey were evaluated as shown in Figure 2. Because the survey had
an open text field to indicate the keywords, a tokenization process involving NLP (Natural
Language Processing) techniques was carried out, in which each survey response passed through
a text processing pipeline and lemmatization (obtaining its canonical form or lemma) using
SpaCy library next to the module SpaCy Stanza [
This procedure initially separates the words of each answer: by line if there are line breaks; by comma if there are commas; or by spaces if they only contain spaces. Once the responses corrupción delincuencia robo robar miedo muerte ladrón narcotráfico droga delito agresión peligro sicariato asesinato
asalto extorsión secuestro violación maltrato choro 24
31 29
53 0 10 40
50 20 30
Count
(a) Survey Report
are processed, the use of Workers is handled, which uses the "web" module of the Python
Pattern [
For the storage phase, the use of MongoDB was considered, which is a NoSQL (non-relational)
database management system that stores data in the form of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
documents instead of a columnar format [
The responses generated by the Twitter API are used as input to be stored in a MongoDB database. This data goes through a normalization process, separating the data into diferent collections (tables) by user, content of the tweet and metadata of the search carried out by the Workers. Before storing the tweets, here are subjected to a sanitization process, in which
Step 2 Separate words by available separator; Step 3 Convert the words to lower case; Step 4 Remove space and punctuation marks; Step 5 Lemmatize words; Step 6 Remove accents marks;
symbols, labels, links and #hashtags are removed of the original content of the tweet and is stored in an additional field so as not to alter the word quantification process. The storage process prevents overwriting of data to be able to carry out a historical evaluation of each tweet. For this, a web service was developed that serves as a bridge between the collection workers and the database system MongoDB. Figure 3 presents the overview system architecture, along
taD nalyticsA yeurvS LNP
with the data flow of each component. All components of the system have a flow unidirectional, except for the MongoDB database and the web service, which are capable of sending and receiving data each. For the analytical process of this research, used the web service as the data source for the analysis graphs, since it acts as a mirror of the Twitter API and has only a subset of relevant data.
To understand the levels of security that exist in a country and in its main cities; not only it is enough to have the data provided by the national government as a reference, but it is important to understand the relief of the people and public opinion too; since many of the events related to insecurity are mostly hidden due to fear of repression; especially in a Latin American context where culture and violence have a singular connotation. In Figure 1, which data is taken from the national government, they only report data on homicides and death in a six-month period; when insecurity has a deeper meaning; maybe it could be measured through the perception of feelings that generate panic or fear in citizens, and even an impact on the economic model of the productive matrix of a country. Taken based on the correlation of the words with the highest number of tweets in Figure 2, both for the survey report as well as for tweets, it has been explored in a weekly period due to the limitations of the Twitter API service, the number of tweets generated with the words with the highest incidence at the national and regional level as shown in Figure 4.
When we analyze the social and political crisis in Ecuador, people define robo, delincuencia,
muerte, corrupción and miedo as the words that are most linked to insecurity. These curves
will depend on the events with the greatest impact on social networks that may arise over time.
On August 14 we have a report of approximately 600 tweets for a news item that caused panic
in the city of Guayaquil [
We further observe that in Figure 4 (a) crime and corruption are the words of greatest concern; In other words, corruption is a factor that always afects our environment and can cause a perception of insecurity for investment in our national territory.
In Guayaquil, Figure 4 (b), being one of the most dangerous cities in the national territory, 500 tseew400 T f o reb300 m u N200 100 robo delincuencia muerte corrupcion miedo maintains uniformity among all the words that were selected over 10 days from August 14 to 24. In the city of Quito, the interaction of tweets is more marked with the focus on corruption as it is a city surrounded by politics, then robbery and below crime. An increase in the interaction of the tweets also coincides with the event raised on the date of August 14. This gives an approach to the fact that each city is a diverse reality due to issues related to cultural and urban connotation. On August 21 in the city of Quito, an event takes place that goes viral on social networks with aggression within a sporting event, where the increase in tweets is reported in the Figure 5, where clearly this word is not the most common in social networks, but requires a contrast in the proportional increase in the number of tweets for the words most related to security. This is afected from August 21 to 23 in the Figures 4 (a), (b), (c).
Through this study, the influence of real events on public perception and opinion in spaces of open discussion is analyzed from the content of social networks. In addition, the topics with the greatest social impact in terms of citizen insecurity in a given time have been identified
Daily count for word: agresion 520 104
26 35 13 through the quantification technique, by extracting tweets.
This data can lead to a socioeconomic, geopolitical and productive study due to the cultural change of the masses. The increase in criminal events within the country leads to the need to implement public policies based on results of perception.
The statistical analysis carried out shows that there is a frequent fluctuation highly dependent on daily events. Likewise, these fluctuations can vary between the diferent subregions of the country from day to day. The most important correlation through this study was Ecuador Guayaquil crime and corruption between Ecuador - Quito - Guayaquil. It was also observed that each event on social networks can have an impact on all the words linked to insecurity.
Predicting a crime rate is very complex since various criminal analysis had already confirmed that crimes are unequally distributed in place, time and context. Such kinds of situations are strongly driven by the environment, inequality, and lifestyle of Ecuadorian citizens, producing a high rate of victimization and negative efects for the people whose lifestyles forces them to expose themselves to a higher risk level.
The information that circulates in social networks responds to the perception and opinion of people on various topics. Regarding security, given the reality of indicators of violence and robbery in Ecuador, this issue is no exception and generates spaces for citizen opinion. In this research, the influence of networks on the perception of insecurity is verified, which contributes to the generation of a diagnosis that allows the construction of strategies for its control. It is necessary to highlight that this tool could allow the determination of an indicator, for the measurement of its evolution. The stochastic error that could be generated when unreal accounts unfoundedly seek to alter such perception in order to generate chaos or stability should also be taken into consideration prior to any conclusion, therefore the importance of reaching the largest possible filter so that the information processed is mostly from real accounts.