A technological perspective on detecting and countering online radicalization

Transcription

1 A technological perspective on detecting and countering online radicalization Fredrik Johansson, Ph.D.

2 Online radicalization A process whereby individuals through their online interactions and exposures to various types of internet context, come to view violence as a legitimate method of solving social and political conflicts (Bermingham, 2009) Terrorist groups have recognized the power of Internet and social media for recruiting and radicalizing people. Successful at producing and spreading large amounts of terrorismrelated content online. Many opportunities for people to become radicalized and to confirm existing beliefs in social media-created echo chambers. Many anecdotal stories about people who become self-radicalized online, however, not as much empirical scientific evidence (yet).

3 Online violent extremism content This presentation will be focused on detection, analysis and potential removal of violent extremism-related online content. If violent extremism-related online content can be decreased, online radicalization is likely to decrease as well. If we do not know what kind of content and which narratives which are out there, counter-narratives are unlikely to succeed!

4 Evolution of online terrorism propaganda Earlier, terrorism propaganda was spread using recordings distributed slowly via copied video cassettes or dedicated terrorist forums (one-tomany). Today, high-quality productions are produced on a day-to-day basis and distributed and shared instantly via social media including YouTube, Twitter and Telegram (many-to-many).

5 Analysis of online terrorism propaganda A few recent studies in which researchers have tried to analyze various aspects of online terrorism propaganda, e.g. C. Winter (2015) Documenting the Virtual Caliphate C. Winter (2015) The Virtual Caliphate: Understanding Islamic State s Propaganda Strategy L. Gustafsson (2015) Våldsbejakande islamistisk extremism och sociala medier Manual classification of rather small data samples into various themes or narratives, such as (Winter, 2015): Utopia (~53%), military (~37%), mercy (<1%), victimhood (~7%), brutality (~2%), belonging (<1%) Interesting in their own right, but impossible to go through very large sets of data manually.

6 Large-scale analysis of online terrorism propaganda in Sweden The government commissions the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) to make a quantitative survey and analysis of the violent extremist propaganda spread via the Internet and social media in Sweden. The survey will cover the violent extremist environments in Sweden: right-wing extremism, left-wing and Islamist extremism, and their international links. The Authority shall also carry out a qualitative analysis of this material as well as the content of texts and messages. (received , final report to be given in March 2019 ) Interdisciplinary research between computer scientists and domain experts (terrorism researchers, linguists, psychologists, etc.). Suggested research methodology recently approved by ethics board (EPN). Focus on content, not individuals! Collaboration with relevant Swedish organizations and authorities.

7 Large-scale analysis of online terrorism propaganda in Sweden Identification of relevant search terms, hashtags, seed accounts, etc. Automated collection of data via available APIs and custom-built crawlers Anonymizing data (e.g., aggregation and removal of PII) Semi-automatic filtering of non-supporter accounts in collected data Identification and separate treatment of bots and hijacked accounts Applying standard social media analysis metrics, such as: Top hashtags, top links, most central accounts, tweets/day, nr of followers, (location) Application of more sophisticated NLP and machine learning techniques for classifying the actual content

8 Identification of relevant search terms Important to carry out this task in cooperation with domain experts! Previously official accounts could be utilized as seed accounts. Now harder due to active suspensions of such accounts. Unofficial lists often utilized as seed accounts, e.g., "The Twitter Guide: The Most Important Jihadi Sites and Support for Jihad and the Mujahideen on Twitter (Fisher & Prucha, 2014) and (Ashcroft et al., 2015) Nowadays, keywords in combination with hashtags work better for Twitter. E.g.: #KhalifaRestored, #ISLAMICSTATE, #ILoveISIS #WhiteGenocide, #StopIslam

9 Identification of non-supporters When collecting followers of known extremism accounts, a problem is that many of the followers often are non-supporters, e.g., Journalists Researchers Intelligence analysts Removing accounts which have not explicitly used known extremismrelated hashtags can filter out most non-supporters, but manual inspection required. Data WILL be biased, erroneous and/or missing!

10 Identification of bots and hijacked accounts When spreading propaganda, it is common to use bot accounts and hijacked hashtags to reach out to a larger audience, and sometimes also hijacked accounts to seem more trustworthy. FOI have developed sophisticated methods for being able to detect bots and hijacked accounts. Dawn of Glad Tidings

11 Examples of (automated) analysis of the data Social network analysis (SNA) Which accounts are most highly connected, most influential, etc.? Topic detection and classification Which words and narratives are used in the propaganda? How much of the content is aimed at brutality, victimhood, utopia, etc.? Behaviour profiling According to Rowe & Saif (2016), people who become radicalized change their language extensively by adapting to a more extreme vocabulary. Can potentially be combined with other indicators to detect early stages of online radicalization? (sharing of violent movies, links, etc.) Geolocalization From which places or regions is the content distributed?

12 Effectiveness of removing online extremism content? Some companies are good at shutting down (some sorts of) violent extremism-related accounts and removing related content. Over 300,000 Twitter accounts shut down for promoting terrorism in According to a study by Berger (2016), other extremist groups such as white nationalists suffer only a low suspension pressure from Twitter. Europol s IRU and UK CTIRU attempting to remove terrorism content. Observed counter-strategy: utilize several social media platforms and multiple accounts Alternative narratives as a more viable approach for reducing the likelihood of online radicalization? Badly produced counter-narratives from authorities likely to fail Dialouge with other people with the same background more likely to work? Jigsaw s / Google s Redirect Method

13 Questions? Thank you for your attention!