Social Media Analytics Technology helps defense and intelligence analysts uncover important topics and trends in the data and understand their meaning.
By Karen E. Thuermer MIT Correspondent
allows end users to focus the majority of their time on Social media offers great opportunities for underthe mission instead of on data mining.” standing the pulse of a population: reactions to events, Such analytical technology must effectively manopinions on important issues, political sentiment, calls age social media data in all its forms, be it structured, for protests and much more. Social media also provides unstructured and/or semi-structured, including both early alerts for defense, intelligence and homeland video and audio content. security analysts about potential crises such as the next “For military and intelligence applications, the Arab Spring, military conflict or natural disaster. same needs apply—all the way from the military If there has been a recent event, and individuals recruiter, who finds publically available data on recruitwho live in a certain region are now angry at U.S. ment issues important, to the frontline soldiers who troops, the extent of their anger or displeasure can want to know what the current sentiment is toward increase or decrease over time. Knowledge of those Tony Jimenez U.S. military presence in a specific town or region,” said ebbs and flows could help improve the safety of those tjimenez@microtech.net Tony Jimenez, president and chief executive officer of troops. MicroTech. “Social media data requires analysis that is often beyond “Those of us watching on TV may think it is not so bad, whereas the capability of an individual or even a group.” social media may show some very influential individuals with negative The issue is sifting through the plethora of data to get to actionable perceptions who are influencing others to think as they think,” said information. Rebecca Garcia, director, SAS Federal National Security Group. “This In addition to public or external conversation information for could jeopardize the safety of U.S. personnel if they are not aware of operations, internal operations can benefit from social media analytics this line of thinking.” as well. The Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project But the sheer volume of the data can make it difficult to process now indicates that 65 percent of all adult Internet users are now using and analyze. “Additionally, the amount of noise in the data—informasocial networking sites. tion irrelevant to the problem at hand—can be staggering,” said Dr. “The military is a very large operation and could certainly incorRobert McCormack, associate director of the analytics, modeling and porate social media into reaching out and engaging with service simulation division at Aptima. personnel via this medium that is now becoming so prolific,” Jimenez Disentangling key memes of interest from the ocean of noise is a remarked. “Analysis of service personnel concerns, trends and issues, difficult undertaking. The overwhelming profusion of user-generated, in the proper mindset, could yield far greater efficiencies and mission publicly accessible content, like that from tweets, on blogs and in success.” many online communities, demands an automated solution. Consequently, social media analytics provides yet another opporEnter advanced analytic technologies. These technologies help tunity for increased efficiency and support of operations with informafind important topics and trends and help those who have a need to tion discovery from the wealth of publicly available data. know understand their impact on the population. There are obvious global applications for social data analytics, as was evident with events last year in Egypt and Libya, as well as the Search Algorithms natural disasters in Japan and Haiti. The first global news about the breach of Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound came from a neighA number of companies currently offer advanced analytic techbor’s tweets. Social media networks have provided original on-thenologies for social media. scene reporting of planned protests, demonstrations and operations. Northrop Grumman, for example, offers a tool that uses algo“This technology’s potential to harness the ocean of publically rithms to search through publicly available information and then available information on the Internet makes it particularly useful in narrows that data into predetermined subjects, categories and other social media applications,” commented Sean Love, geospatial business criteria. “That information is then sorted, providing the end-user with development director for Northrop Grumman. “Being able to hone data that is relevant, focused and manageable,” said Love. in on specific information on a specific topic, without having to wade Northrop Grumman’s tool is designed to alert officials of potential through petabytes of data, saves a significant amount of time and crises, conflicts and social trends. 8 | MIT 16.5
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