Conflict Prediction Through Geo-Spatial Interpolation of Radicalization in Syrian Social Media

Abstract

While there is widespread agreement amongst scholars and practitioners that processes of popular radicalization frequently underlie the generation of insurgent violence, an absence of high-resolution data has prevented existing work from directly modeling this relationship. A spatio-temporal map of extremist discourse would allow planners to monitor the emergence of social radicalization prior to the eruption of large-scale violence. Moreover, by utilizing newly developed statistical techniques for geo-spatial causal inference, such data can provide a basis for generating systematic predictions of the location and timing of future episodes of collective violence. As an initial demonstration of the value of this approach, this project focuses on estimating spatial-temporal quantities from the content of Twitter messages originating within Syria. Geo-spatial interpolations of these quantities will then be used to generate predictions of the locations of violent events within Syria.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 24, 2015
Accession Number
ADA627136

Entities

People

  • Adam Haupt
  • Camber Warren

Organizations

  • United States Army Training and Doctrine Command

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Cyber
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Big Data
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Computational Science
  • Computer Programs
  • Data Mining
  • Data Science
  • Ethnic Groups
  • Human Population
  • Information Science
  • Information Systems
  • Linguistics
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Parallel Computing
  • Political Science
  • Social Media
  • Social Sciences
  • Terrorists

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Bayesian Inference