Abstract
This paper introduces an approach for the examination and organization of unstructured text to identify relationships between networks of individuals. This approach uses discourse analysis to identify information providers and recipients and determines the structure of covert organizations irrespective of the language that facilitate conversations between members. Then, this method applies social network analytics to determine the arrangement of a covert organization without any a priori knowledge of the network structure. This approach is tested and validated using communication data collected in a virtual world setting. Our analysis indicates that the proposed framework successfully detected the covert structure of three information networks, and their cliques, within an online gaming community during a simulation of a large-scale event.
Highlights
In an era when criminal and terrorist organizations have fully appropriated the Internet and social media to coordinate their activities and recruit followers, the need for new and adaptable approaches for analyzing communication activities has never been greater
The challenge is that criminal and terrorist networks are generally latent and often have no formalized organizational structure that is observable to an outsider (Ressler, 2006; Sageman, 2011), and often the accuracy of network models communication can only be tested in retrospect after the networks have been disassembled or destroyed (Carley et al, 2003B)
Analysts determining the structure of covert criminal or terrorist networks face three major challenges: (1) no formal network structure exists because the network is a series of individuals and smaller groups coupled together in various degrees (Carley et al, 2003B; Xu and Chen, 2008), (2) there are multiple languages and codes being used in the network (Malm et al, 2011), and (3) outside analysts cannot employ sophisticated tools based on semantics in real-time because they do not have a deep understanding of the languages or codes being used during communication (Davis, 2006)
Summary
In an era when criminal and terrorist organizations have fully appropriated the Internet and social media to coordinate their activities and recruit followers, the need for new and adaptable approaches for analyzing communication activities has never been greater. Analysts determining the structure of covert criminal or terrorist networks face three major challenges: (1) no formal network structure exists because the network is a series of individuals and smaller groups coupled together in various degrees (Carley et al, 2003B; Xu and Chen, 2008), (2) there are multiple languages and codes being used in the network (Malm et al, 2011), and (3) outside analysts cannot employ sophisticated tools based on semantics in real-time because they do not have a deep understanding of the languages or codes being used during communication (Davis, 2006). Despite often having ambiguous official structures, control and coordination mechanisms do exist within covert networks and these structures can be modeled to identify key actors (Carley et al, 2003B)
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