Solutions to Detect and Analyze Online Radicalization : A Survey

Online Radicalization (also called Cyber-Terrorism or Extremism or Cyber-Racism or Cyber- Hate) is widespread and has become a major and growing concern to the society, governments and law enforcement agencies around the world. Research shows that various platforms on the Internet (low barrier to publish content, allows anonymity, provides exposure to millions of users and a potential of a very quick and widespread diffusion of message) such as YouTube (a popular video sharing website), Twitter (an online micro-blogging service), Facebook (a popular social networking website), online discussion forums and blogosphere are being misused for malicious intent. Such platforms are being used to form hate groups, racist communities, spread extremist agenda, incite anger or violence, promote radicalization, recruit members and create virtual organi- zations and communities. Automatic detection of online radicalization is a technically challenging problem because of the vast amount of the data, unstructured and noisy user-generated content, dynamically changing content and adversary behavior. There are several solutions proposed in the literature aiming to combat and counter cyber-hate and cyber-extremism. In this survey, we review solutions to detect and analyze online radicalization. We review 40 papers published at 12 venues from June 2003 to November 2011. We present a novel classification scheme to classify these papers. We analyze these techniques, perform trend analysis, discuss limitations of existing techniques and find out research gaps

Searching Data: A Review of Observational Data Retrieval Practices in Selected Disciplines

A cross-disciplinary examination of the user behaviours involved in seeking and evaluating data is surprisingly absent from the research data discussion. This review explores the data retrieval literature to identify commonalities in how users search for and evaluate observational research data. Two analytical frameworks rooted in information retrieval and science technology studies are used to identify key similarities in practices as a first step toward developing a model describing data retrieval

Understanding the Unoriginal: Indeterminant Originalism and Independent Interpretation of the Alaska Constitution

Loudspeakers were invented over 150 years ago, but the loudspeakers used todayare still based on the same ideas. Traditionally, good sound quality has been obtainedby using expensive materials in the loudspeakers and by allowing themto be big. However, nowadays loudspeakers are wanted in applications such asmobile phones and tablets where size and weight are very limited and there is aconstant desire to decrease production costs. Special small loudspeakers, knownas micro loudspeakers, have been developed for this purpose but due to the severerestrictions in size and manufacturing costs, the sound quality in the microloudspeakers is relatively poor. One problem is that the nonlinearities of thesystem, present in any loudspeaker, become more evident in the case of microloudspeakers and cause noticeable distortion of the sound.This master’s thesis has been performed in cooperation with Opalum (formerlyActiwave), a company specializing in using digital signal processing to improvethe sound in loudspeakers with poor acoustic properties. The objective of thethesis is to investigate ways to increase the sound quality in micro loudspeakersby using nonlinear control. Focus has been on frequencies below the resonancefrequency since the distortion is more noticeable at low frequencies. First, a nonlinearmodel of the micro loudspeaker has been obtained using system identificationstrategies. The model describes the relationship between the voltage overthe voice-coil and the diaphragm displacement. Subsequently, input-output linearisationhas been used to design a controller for the system and the effect onthe distortion has been investigated through experiments. Two different modelstructures have been tested, a physical model based on the Thiele-Small modeland a black-box model with a Hammerstein-Wiener structure. In both cases, thenonlinearities were modelled as polynomials. The controller was then extendedwith an updating algorithm, making it adaptive.The efficiency of the controllers has been proved by experiments, where distortionwas decreased by up to 60 % compared to the case without control. The effectwas largest for low frequencies, around one third of the resonance frequency,but improvements were noted up to about two thirds of the resonance frequency,depending on the loudspeaker unit. The approach using a physical model andthat using a black-box model have shown similar results.Högtalaren uppfanns för över 150 år sedan men de högtalare som används idagbygger till stora delar på samma teknik. Högkvalitativt ljud har traditionellt uppnåttsgenom att ge högtalaren goda akustiska egenskaper genom att tillåta den attvara stor och tillverkad av dyra material. Utmaningen idag ligger i att högtalarefinns inbyggda i exempelvis mobiltelefoner, vilket innebär att de behöver görassmå, lätta och billiga att producera. För att möta dessa krav har kompromisserkrävts vilket gör att dessa små högtalare, kallade mikrohögtalare, har sämre ljudkvalitet.Ett problem är att de olinjäriteter som finns i alla högtalare blir extraframträdande i små högtalare vilket leder till distorsion och övertoner i ljudsignalen.Detta examensarbete är gjort i samarbete med Opalum (tidigare Actiwave), vilketär ett företag som specialiserar sig på att med hjälp av digital signalbehandlingförbättra ljudkvaliteten för högtalare med akustiskt dåliga egenskaper. Syftetmed examensarbetet har varit att minska distorsionen i en mikrohögtalaremed hjälp av olinjär reglering. Fokus har legat på den lägre delen av frekvensbandet,under resonansfrekvensen, eftersom det är där distorsionen är mest märkbar.Först har en olinjär modell av högtalaren tagits fram genom systemidentifiering.Modellen förklarar sambandet mellan spänningen över högtalarens talspole ochmembranets utslag. I ett nästa steg har en regulator designats utifrån modellenoch regulatorns effekt på distorsionen har utvärderats genom experiment. Två olikamodellstrukturer har undersökts, dels en fysikalisk modell baserad på Thiele-Smallmodellen och dels en svartlådemodell med Hammerstein-Wienerstruktur.I båda fallen har olinjäriteterna modellerats som polynom. Regulatorn har sedanutökats med en uppdateringsalgoritm som gör den adaptiv.Experiment har visat att regleringen bidrog till att minska distorsionen med upptill 60 % jämfört med då systemet kördes utan reglering. Effekten har varit störstför låga frekvenser, kring en tredjedel av resonsnsfrekvensen, men förbättringarhar kunnat ses upp till frekvenser kring två tredjedelar av resonansfrekvensen.Både metoden med en fysikalisk modellstruktur och med en svartlådestrukturhar visat likartade resultat

Social Data Mining for Crime Intelligence

With the advancement of the Internet and related technologies, many traditional crimes have made the leap to digital environments. The successes of data mining in a wide variety of disciplines have given birth to crime analysis. Traditional crime analysis is mainly focused on understanding crime patterns, however, it is unsuitable for identifying and monitoring emerging crimes. The true nature of crime remains buried in unstructured content that represents the hidden story behind the data. User feedback leaves valuable traces that can be utilised to measure the quality of various aspects of products or services and can also be used to detect, infer, or predict crimes. Like any application of data mining, the data must be of a high quality standard in order to avoid erroneous conclusions. This thesis presents a methodology and practical experiments towards discovering whether (i) user feedback can be harnessed and processed for crime intelligence, (ii) criminal associations, structures, and roles can be inferred among entities involved in a crime, and (iii) methods and standards can be developed for measuring, predicting, and comparing the quality level of social data instances and samples. It contributes to the theory, design and development of a novel framework for crime intelligence and algorithm for the estimation of social data quality by innovatively adapting the methods of monitoring water contaminants. Several experiments were conducted and the results obtained revealed the significance of this study in mining social data for crime intelligence and in developing social data quality filters and decision support systems

'“A strange enough region wherein to wander and muse": Mapping Clerkenwell in Victorian Popular Fictions'

Drawing on the work of Bertrand Westphal, this essay attempts to perform a geocritical reading of the London district of Clerkenwell. After discussing the spatial turn in the Humanities and introducing a range of spatial critical approaches, the essay “maps” literary Clerkenwell from the perspectives of genre hybridity and intertextuality, spatially articulate cartography, multifocal and historically aware public perception and potentially transgressive connection to outside areas. Clerkenwell is seen to have stimulated a range of genre fiction, including Newgate, realist, penny and slum fiction, and social exploration journalism. In much of this writing, the district was defined by its negative associations with crime, poverty, incarceration and slaughter. Such negative imageability, the essay suggests, was self-perpetuating, since authors would be influenced by their reading to create literary worlds repeating existing tropes; these literary representations, in turn, influenced readers’ perceptions of the area.Intertextual, multi-layered and polysensorial geocritical readings,the essay concludes, can producepowerful andnuanced pictures of literary placesbut also face a formidable challenge in defining an adequate geocentric corpus

Examining the Institutional Ethnographer’s Toolkit.

Institutional ethnography (IE) is a method of inquiry advocated by Canadian sociologist Dorothy E. Smith and a wide range of researchers working in sociology, social work, education, nursing, political organizing, social policy, women’s organizations, and so on. Institutional ethnographers do not cede authority to ideas established in the literature. Instead, they rely on people’s experience as the point of entry into inquiry exploring connections among local settings of people’s everyday lives, institutional processes, and translocal ruling relations. Smith’s concept of ‘ruling’ is derived from Marx. IE relies on a theorized way of exploring ruling practices—as people’s social activities organized through texts, language and expertise. This article defines some of the concepts of which newcomers to institutional ethnography need to develop a working knowledge, namely: epistemology (and epistemological shift), ontology (and ontological shift), social organization, social relations, ruling relations, the role of texts in ruling relations, ideology, problematic, discourse, experience as data, interviewing, and data collection