State of the art 2015: a literature review of social media intelligence capabilities for counter-terrorism

Overview This paper is a review of how information and insight can be drawn from open social media sources. It focuses on the specific research techniques that have emerged, the capabilities they provide, the possible insights they offer, and the ethical and legal questions they raise. These techniques are considered relevant and valuable in so far as they can help to maintain public safety by preventing terrorism, preparing for it, protecting the public from it and pursuing its perpetrators. The report also considers how far this can be achieved against the backdrop of radically changing technology and public attitudes towards surveillance. This is an updated version of a 2013 report paper on the same subject, State of the Art. Since 2013, there have been significant changes in social media, how it is used by terrorist groups, and the methods being developed to make sense of it.  The paper is structured as follows: Part 1 is an overview of social media use, focused on how it is used by groups of interest to those involved in counter-terrorism. This includes new sections on trends of social media platforms; and a new section on Islamic State (IS). Part 2 provides an introduction to the key approaches of social media intelligence (henceforth ‘SOCMINT’) for counter-terrorism. Part 3 sets out a series of SOCMINT techniques. For each technique a series of capabilities and insights are considered, the validity and reliability of the method is considered, and how they might be applied to counter-terrorism work explored. Part 4 outlines a number of important legal, ethical and practical considerations when undertaking SOCMINT work

Investigating the impact of computer conferencing: content analysis as a manageable research tool

Content analysis of computer conferences provides a rich source of data for researching and understanding online learning. However the complexities of using content analysis in a relatively new research field have resulted in researchers avoiding its use as a qualitative or quantitative method and using more familiar methods such as survey and interview instead. Ethical issues are also raised that, though ensuring students&rsquo; rights, particularly to privacy and with no fear of coercion, are making it difficult for researchers to access and analyse archives of conference data as a research source. This paper suggests a pragmatic but systematic approach to solving these research issues by using several research strategies that are described in the context of the authors&rsquo; research and practice.<br /

Review of existing Australian and international cyber-safety research

Information and communication technologies have permeated almost all areas of society and become an important component of daily functioning for most Australians. This is particularly true for Internet and mobile phone technology. The majority of Australian households (67% in 2007 – 2008) have access to the Internet and over 11 million Australians use the Internet as an integral part of their personal, social and occupational activities. By mid-2008, there were over 22 million active mobile phones being used in Australia, which equates to more than one phone for every citizen. There are many benefits associated with Internet and mobile phone use; however, there are also risks, particularly with the Internet. In fact, there is almost daily media discussion of these risks and dangers. However, to ensure that the information contained in this review was as accurate as possible, we primarily sourced quality research literature published in scientific journals both in Australia and overseas. In addition, quality material not published in scientific journals was consulted and included where appropriate, thus ensuring that this review was based on reliable research studies containing the most current and accurate research evidence available. From the outset, it is important to note that there are several methodological and ethical issues in relation associated with the measurement and examination of many cyber-safety risks. The nature of this type of research makes it very difficult to address certain risk areas, in particular those that relate to children (e.g., online grooming)

Creating Church Online: An Ethnographic Study of Five Internet-Based Christian Communities

“Online churches” are Internet-based Christian communities, seeking to pursue worship, discussion, friendship, teaching, support, proselytisation and other key religious goals through computer-mediated communication. These online churches are one example of “online religion”, a new kind of digital religious practice that promises to transform worship, authority, community and the construction of identity. This thesis examines five online churches, representing diverse media, theological traditions, leadership structures and forms of external oversight. Each has created a sizeable congregation and offers forms of worship and community online. I used ethnographic methods to examine these churches with particular attention to media, worship, community and leadership. I conducted long-term participant observation over the three years of my research, taking part in online and offline activities whenever possible, speaking informally with as many people as possible and interviewing over 100 leaders and members. Survey data and other written materials were also studied where available, including media reports, participant accounts and online blog posts. My research suggested seven important themes present in each group: mass appeal, the formation of community, spiritual experience, the replication of familiar elements of architecture, liturgy and organisation, the prevalence of local churchgoing among online participants, patterns of internal control and systems of external oversight. Each case study demonstrates the very different negotiations of those themes at work in each group. In my final chapter, I bring together threads and insights from each case study according to four key dimensions of one common theme: the relationship between digital and everyday life. Online churches deliberately replicate familiar elements of everyday activity, become part of the everyday, remain carefully distinct from the everyday and become distinctively digital. We must attend to all four of these layers to adequately understand and evaluate what takes place online, and what role that online activity plays in everyday religious lives

On-Focus : A Web-Based Platform for Planning, Organizing, and Managing Focus Groups

Focus groups are a research methodology that researchers use to get qualitative data about a subject matter or a product. Owing to the Covid outbreak in 2019 and the prevalence of group think in focus groups, a web-based platform called On-Focus was developed as a means for researchers to organize and manage focus groups online. On-Focus was developed by following the recommended design approach for conducting focus groups found in literatures. With On-Focus, researchers can filter out participants that are not a fit for the focus group by asking questions that are filled by participants before they send a request to participate. Researcher are required to enter a list of agendas for a focus group before they can create one. Also, the researcher can hide the visibility of a participants’ chat during a focus group as a way of preventing group think in the meeting. Additionally, researchers can quickly get a quantitative response to a question by using the polling functionality. A focus group was created to evaluate the effectiveness of On-Focus. The participants comprised of students from the Montclair State University’s Computer Science Department. During the simulation of the focus group, the participants and the moderator tested out the various functionalities of the application. After the simulation, the participants were given a survey that asked Usability questions about On-Focus. From the results that were gotten from the evaluation, On-Focus is an effective tool for conducting focus group research online with the added benefits of elimination of group think and a means to quickly get a quantitative response from participants by using the polling functionality

Gendered Expression Online: Exploring Gendered Communication on Facebook and in a Collaborative Editing Task

College students are increasingly using digital media, such as social network sites (SNSs) and collaborative editing tools (Wikipedia), as identity exploration tools, aligning or distancing themselves from their offline selves through the online affordances of anonymity and agentic choice. The opportunities for gender fluidity available online (Armentor-Cota, 2011) provide college students with opportunities to experiment with and manipulate varied identities in a safe space where consequences of confronting identity norms may be less severe (Turkle, 1996; Shaw, 1997). Similarly, restrictive offline gender differences may diminish in online spaces, favoring a more flexible and androgynous enactment of gender (Martin, Cook, & Andrews, 2016) in certain online spaces. Even so, research has identified a significant gender gap in collaborative digital spaces such as Wikipedia (Glott, Schmidt, & Ghosh, 2010; Hill & Shaw, 2013; Lam et al., 2011; Pande, 2011). The current research examined identity choices and gendered communicative patterns online using a popular SNS, Facebook, and a simulated collaborative editing environment. Study one explored gender variations in communicative patterns on Facebook, while study two explored gender expressions in a public, collaborative editing task. Although the studies found specific gendered communicative patterns on both Facebook and Wikipedia, the majority of the online behaviors were not gender-specific and online behaviors reflected more similarities than differences between men and women, supporting a more flexible understanding of gendered expressions (Martin, Cook, & Andrews, 2016) online. Based on these studies, some offline gender differences replicated through certain online spaces, such as women favoring relationship maintenance (Facebook), women orienting towards more harmonious behaviors/environments (Facebook and Wikipedia), and gender-specific power dynamics from offline spaces (Facebook). Women also favored more positive collaborative environments and those that included at least one other female editor, while men more actively edited in a neutral environment lacking positive affirmations. Other gender differences appear to dissipate in certain online environments, illustrated by both women and men actively editing and collaborating to the same extent on a fact-based section of an essay. Furthermore, men have more often favored this type of information sharing than women in other online environments. Overall, these results find that certain offline inequalities and power dynamics may replicate in online spaces. Online gender differences appear to be nuanced in nature with regards to specific online behaviors and expressions of gender may reflect the gender composition of peers engaging in the online space

Studying Reddit: A Systematic Overview of Disciplines, Approaches, Methods, and Ethics

This article offers a systematic analysis of 727 manuscripts that used Reddit as a data source, published between 2010 and 2020. Our analysis reveals the increasing growth in use of Reddit as a data source, the range of disciplines this research is occurring in, how researchers are getting access to Reddit data, the characteristics of the datasets researchers are using, the subreddits and topics being studied, the kinds of analysis and methods researchers are engaging in, and the emerging ethical questions of research in this space. We discuss how researchers need to consider the impact of Reddit’s algorithms, affordances, and generalizability of the scientific knowledge produced using Reddit data, as well as the potential ethical dimensions of research that draws data from subreddits with potentially sensitive populations

FloraGuard: tackling the online illegal trade in endangered plants through a cross-disciplinary ICT-enabled methodology.

This article presents a part of the ongoing Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded project “FloraGuard: Tackling the illegal trade in endangered plants” that relies on cross-disciplinary approaches to analyze online marketplaces for the illegal trade in endangered plants, and explores strategies to develop digital resources to assist law enforcement in countering and disrupting this criminal market. This contribution focuses on how the project brought together computer science, criminology, conservation science, and law enforcement expertise to create a tool for the automatic gathering of relevant online information to be used for research, intelligence, and investigative purposes. The article also discusses the ethical standards applied and proposes the concept of “artificial intelligence (AI) review” to provide a sociotechnical solution that builds trustworthiness in the AI approaches used for this type of cross-disciplinary information and communications technology (ICT)-enabled methodology