ABSTRACT
The potential for social media platforms to reveal information relevant, and even central, to forming opinions about psycho-legal issues has encouraged forensic evaluators to incorporate these data into forensic mental health assessments (FMHA) with some frequency. For example, social media data could offer important insights about the timing of behaviours, patterns of functioning, communication style, or contextual factors that may be less apparent from other sources. Yet, emerging evidence from experimental studies suggests forensic practitioners are less convinced about the usefulness of social media data compared to more traditional sources. Further, there is a general lack of guidance on how to weigh and examine these data. Could such skeptical perceptions and misguidance within the field present another opportunity to introduce bias into the evaluation process? In this chapter, the authors acknowledge the many challenges of using social media data, including questions of authentication and impression management, but argue these data should be approached in the same general manner as any other collateral source. We discuss recommendations for objectively determining a social media source's relevance and veracity and provide illustrative case exercises of bias-reductions strategies.
