For this course, we are using Twitter to broaden your classroom learning experience. It is not necessary to have your own Twitter account to participate in the Twitter social media activities throughout the course. The CRJ305 Twitter feed is accessible on our class website and course credit will be earned by viewing Twitter and interacting with your instructor and classmates on the course discussion board. However, if you want to interact with your classmates and others on Twitter in addition to the discussion boards, here are instructions for setting up your own Twitter account: Signing up with Twitter (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. The purpose of this activity is to give you a chance to familiarize yourself with Twitter and the international social media presence of crime prevention topics. For this activity, you will visit Twitter.com (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. and click on the little magnifying glass on the left side of the screen to reveal the search box to search Twitter. Then do the following:

• In the search box, type the words “crime prevention” and click “enter” to initiate a Twitter search.
• Scroll down the page and review some of the tweets that mention the term crime prevention. Choose two tweets that interest you that relate to a crime prevention program, law enforcement approach to crime prevention, research on crime prevention, etc. Please choose different tweets than those your classmates have chosen. Therefore, you may want to complete this activity early in the week to avoid duplicating your classmates’ chosen tweets.
• Share the links to the tweets in the discussion board. See below for further instructions on what to include in your discussion.
• If you do not have a Twitter account, simply click on the tweet and copy and paste the URL for the tweet. Share the link on the discussion board. See below for further instructions on what to include in your discussion.
• In addition to the links to the two tweets you chose, please address the following in your discussion:
  • Overall, what did you observe in reviewing the tweets from the Twitter search term “crime prevention?” For example, which agencies were tweeting about crime prevention? Were they primarily in the United States or abroad? Based on your review of the recent tweets (in the past six months), do you think that the United States seems to be focused on promoting crime prevention?
  • What specific topics in crime prevention did you find on Twitter? Were they regarding crime prevention research, theory, and/or practice?
  • If you were to tweet to your U.S. Senators about the topic of crime prevention, what would you say? (Remember that you can use only 140 characters or less on Twitter so be clever in your “tweet” to your Senators).

Your initial post must be a minimum of 300 words in length. Support your initial post with examples from your required reading material and/or other sources. Please provide both in-text citations in APA style and APA style references at the end of your initial post.