1. Social Media Analytics for
National Security
Dr. Salah Alnajem
Founder and CEO, Information Age for I.T. Consultations
Associate Professor of Computational Linguistics and
Natural Language Processing, Kuwait University
alnajem@information-age-consulting.com
@salnajem
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2. AgendaAgenda
• The Importance of Social Media
• The importance of Social Media Analytics
• Benefits of Social Media Analytics Systems
• Social Media Analytics Framework
• Main KPIs
• What can Social Media Analytics Systems
provide?
• Social Media Analytics in Governments
• Example Systems
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3. The Importance of Social MediaThe Importance of Social Media
Social media provide a live tool for measuring
public sentiment and trends and their reaction
towards political, economic, and social issues.
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4. The importance of Social Media
Analytics
The importance of Social Media
Analytics
• Since social media are stored as computerized
data (e.g. text, numbers), the process of
monitoring and analyzing their activities and
dialogs becomes easier and more effective.
• Social Media Analytics and motoring tools are
computational tools used for this purpose.
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5. Benefits of Social Media
Analytics Systems
Benefits of Social Media
Analytics Systems
• Measure and monitor public opinion through
live monitoring and analysis of public opinion
trends and sentiment on social media.
• Proactive Crisis Management.
• Tracking specific national security
information, such as how terrorists are
communicating to their audiences and what
they are communicating.
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6. Benefits of Social Media
Analytics Systems
Benefits of Social Media
Analytics Systems
• Compiling indicators on how effective a
terrorist message is: Are people aligning
themselves with those groups? Or are they
trying to distance themselves?.
• Identifying patterns of behavior and patterns
of methodology used by terrorists.
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7. SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS FRAMEWORKSOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS FRAMEWORK
Acquire
Process
&
Analyze
Decide
& Act

8. Cleansing &
Noise
Filtering
Data
Integration
Natural
Language
Processing
Data Acquisition
Integrating data into centralized
hosted cloud
Analytics tools serving all
types of users
Multichannel delivery
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SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS FRAMEWORKSOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS FRAMEWORK
Acquire
Process & Analyze
Decide & Act

9. Main KPIsMain KPIs
• Followers
• Reach (number of users who read a post)
• Impressions (number of times that the users read a specific
post)
• Interaction Rate (average number of Retweets /Shares and
Favorites per Own post divided by the number of
Followers.)
• Speakers (number of users who talked about someone or
retweeted his/her posts)
• Influencers
• Sentiment
• Interaction Rate (average number of Retweets and
Favorites per Own Tweet divided by the number of
Followers.)
• Keywords and Key phrases9

10. What can Social Media Analytics
Systems provide?
What can Social Media Analytics
Systems provide?
• Real-Time or On-Demand Message Streams
for social media dialogues.
• Statistics about social media data like the
number of impressions, retweets, reach,
interaction rate, and influencers.
• Top mentioned keywords, key phrases, or
hashtags used within social media in a specific
time.
• Sending alerts when someone mentions
keyword in any social media platform.
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11. What can Social Media
Analytics Systems provide?
What can Social Media
Analytics Systems provide?
• Sentiment and Tone evaluation of social
media users (Positive/Negative) through
semantic analysis of posts using Natural
Language Processing and Computational
Linguistics methods.
• Ability to continuously capture and retain
previous (up to two years) of online
conversation history (useful for trend
confirmation and benchmarking).
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12. Example SystemsExample Systems
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13. US Intelligence Agency
SOCIAL MEDIAANALYTICS IN GOVERNMENTSSOCIAL MEDIAANALYTICS IN GOVERNMENTS
US Domestic Intelligence
Agency
UNITED NATIONS
City of Heidelberg
Germany
United Nation

14. • This U.S. intelligence agency needed to access
and assess huge volumes of structured and
unstructured social media data but struggled with
identifying the most efficient way to bring social
media into its analysis stream.
• Specifically, they needed:
The ability to quickly identify, assess and
communicate societal and cultural shifts relating
to events and topics.
• A holistic view of geographic location of the
social media sources, including its people and
their sentiment related to relevant topics of
interest.
• A dynamic and easy-to-use front end to the
analysts that visually makes sense out of the
enormous amount of social media.
• Identify cultural shifts in attitude based on conversations in social
media.
• Quickly analyze relevant topics from the enormous amount of open
source media.
• Easily correlate influential authors with key topics and followers to
gauge sentiment.
• Give a more realistic view of social conversations with multi-
language support.
• Analyze both static and dynamic social media content.
Challenges:
SAS® Social Media Analytics
• Media Portal
Solution:
Business Impact:
US Intelligence Agency
Mission: Counter-terrorism
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS IN GOVERNMENTSSOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS IN GOVERNMENTS

15. • Need for early warning signs of a bioterrorist attack or
epidemic.
• Need ability to identify outbreak and spread as well as
understand causal factors, effects, and impacts
• Need ability to identify vulnerable populations and
geographies and know where to apply resources to
most critical situations
• Unable to access open source data in real time and
find signals that are out of the norm
• Unable to perform deep analytics on social data
• Need ability to continuously fine-tune and add to
complex taxonomy of terms
• Ability to get earlier warning of bioterrorist attack or epidemic using real time
data and alerts
• Improved tactical decision-making by getting more real time ground
intelligence and ability deploy resources for greatest impact
• Improved strategic decision-making based on insightful comparisons to
competitors across attributes
• Social data available for incorporation into advanced analytics to find
other terms to track, relationships and correlations
• Better understanding of cause and effect relationships such as impact of
disasters on health
Challenges:
SAS® Social Media Analytics
• Media Portal
Solution:
Business Impact:
US Domestic Intelligence Agency
Mission: Bio-surveillance , Early Warning and Situational Analysis
SOCIAL MEDIAANALYTICS IN GOVERNMENTSSOCIAL MEDIAANALYTICS IN GOVERNMENTS

16. BUSINESS ISSUE
• Needed more reliable way to monitor and gauge public opinion and
sentiment.
• Wanted to hear the voice of the people, dispel rumors and
disinformation.
SOLUTION
• SAS® Social Media Analytics
RESULTS
• Better understand the broad trends in public sentiment expressed on
platforms like Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.
• Informed citizens are less concerned with the big issues and more
concerned with smaller local topics.
• Able to identify campaigns of disinformation early and can reassure
the public with reliable information quickly.
City of Heidelberg
Germany
SOCIAL MEDIAANALYTICS IN GOVERNMENTSSOCIAL MEDIAANALYTICS IN GOVERNMENTS

17. “U.S. intelligence is certainly looking at social
media as a way to identify and dissect patterns
of behavior and patterns of methodology”
Marc Kriz, Senior Account Executive with SAS’
National Security group
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SOCIAL MEDIAANALYTICS IN GOVERNMENTSSOCIAL MEDIAANALYTICS IN GOVERNMENTS

18. “What we’ve done in the National Security
group for SAS, our mission is to bring SAS to
the intelligence community, and it’s running
on a SAS cloud down in Cary.”
Marc Kriz, Senior Account Executive with SAS’
National Security group
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SOCIAL MEDIAANALYTICS IN GOVERNMENTSSOCIAL MEDIAANALYTICS IN GOVERNMENTS

19. SAS SMA Unified DashboardSAS SMA Unified Dashboard

20. SAS SMA Social TrendsSAS SMA Social Trends

21. SAS SMA CompetitorsSAS SMA Competitors

22. SAS SMA InfluencersSAS SMA Influencers

23. SAS SMA Phrase CloudSAS SMA Phrase Cloud

24. SAS SMA Real Time Sentiment AnalysisSAS SMA Real Time Sentiment Analysis

25. SAS SMA Real Time Sentiment AnalysisSAS SMA Real Time Sentiment Analysis
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26. SAS SMA GEO PLOTTINGSAS SMA GEO PLOTTING

27. SAS SMAALERTSSAS SMAALERTS

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33. ThanksThanks
alnajem.com/etraining
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