Enhancing extremist data classification through textual analysis

The high volume of extremist materials on the Internet has created the need for intelligence gathering via the Web and real-time monitoring of potential websites for evidence of extremist activities. However, the manual classification for such contents is practically difficult and time-consuming. In response to this challenge, the work reported here developed several classification frameworks. Each framework provides a basis of text representation before being fed into machine learning algorithm. The basis of text representation are Sentiment-rule, Posit-textual analysis with word-level features, and an extension of Posit analysis, known as Extended-Posit, which adopts character-level as well as word-level data. Identifying some gaps in the aforementioned techniques created avenues for further improvements, most especially in handling larger datasets with better classification accuracy. Consequently, a novel basis of text representation known as the Composite-based method was developed. This is a computational framework that explores the combination of both sentiment and syntactic features of textual contents of a Web page. Subsequently, these techniques are applied on a dataset that had been subjected to a manual classification process, thereafter fed into machine learning algorithm. This is to generate a measure of how well each page can be classified into their appropriate classes. The classifiers considered are both Neural Network (RNN and MLP) and Machine Learning classifiers (such as J48, Random Forest and KNN). In addition, features selection and model optimisation were evaluated to know the cost when creating machine learning model. However, considering all the result obtained from each of the framework, the results indicated that composite features are preferable to solely syntactic or sentiment features which offer improved classification accuracy when used with machine learning algorithms. Furthermore, the extension of Posit analysis to include both word and character-level data out-performed word-level feature alone when applied on the assembled textual data. Moreover, Random Forest classifier outperformed other classifiers explored. Taking cost into account, feature selection improves classification accuracy and save time better than hyperparameter turning (model optimisation).The high volume of extremist materials on the Internet has created the need for intelligence gathering via the Web and real-time monitoring of potential websites for evidence of extremist activities. However, the manual classification for such contents is practically difficult and time-consuming. In response to this challenge, the work reported here developed several classification frameworks. Each framework provides a basis of text representation before being fed into machine learning algorithm. The basis of text representation are Sentiment-rule, Posit-textual analysis with word-level features, and an extension of Posit analysis, known as Extended-Posit, which adopts character-level as well as word-level data. Identifying some gaps in the aforementioned techniques created avenues for further improvements, most especially in handling larger datasets with better classification accuracy. Consequently, a novel basis of text representation known as the Composite-based method was developed. This is a computational framework that explores the combination of both sentiment and syntactic features of textual contents of a Web page. Subsequently, these techniques are applied on a dataset that had been subjected to a manual classification process, thereafter fed into machine learning algorithm. This is to generate a measure of how well each page can be classified into their appropriate classes. The classifiers considered are both Neural Network (RNN and MLP) and Machine Learning classifiers (such as J48, Random Forest and KNN). In addition, features selection and model optimisation were evaluated to know the cost when creating machine learning model. However, considering all the result obtained from each of the framework, the results indicated that composite features are preferable to solely syntactic or sentiment features which offer improved classification accuracy when used with machine learning algorithms. Furthermore, the extension of Posit analysis to include both word and character-level data out-performed word-level feature alone when applied on the assembled textual data. Moreover, Random Forest classifier outperformed other classifiers explored. Taking cost into account, feature selection improves classification accuracy and save time better than hyperparameter turning (model optimisation)

Classification of extremist text on the web using sentiment analysis approach

The high volume of extremist materials online makes manual classification impractical. However, there is a need for automated classification techniques. One set of extremist web pages obtained by the TENE Web-crawler was initially subjected to manual classification. A sentiment-based classification model was then developed to automate the classification of such extremist Websites. The classification model measures how well the pages could be automatically matched against their appropriate classes. The method also identifies particular data items that differ in manual classification from their automated classification. The results from our method showed that overall web pages were correctly matched against the manual classification with a 93% success rate. In addition, a feature selection algorithm was able to reduce the original 26-feature set by one feature to attain a better overall performance of 94% in classifying the Web data

Classification of radical web text using a composite-based method

The spread of terrorism and extremism activities on the Internet has created the need for intelligence gathering via Web and real-time monitoring of potential websites for extremist activities. However, the manual classification for such contents is practically difficult and time-consuming. In response to this challenge, an automated classification system called Composite technique was developed. This is a computational framework that explores the combination of both semantics and syntactic features of textual contents of a Web page. We implemented the framework on a set of extremist Web pages - a dataset that has been subjected to a manual classification process. Thereby, we developed a classification model on the data using the J48 decision algorithm, to generate a measure of how well each page can be classified into their appropriate classes. The classification result obtained from our method when compared with other states of the art, indicated a 96% success rate overall in classifying Web pages when matched against the manual classification

Cloud-based textual analysis as a basis for document classification

Growing trends in data mining and developments in machine learning, have encouraged interest in analytical techniques that can contribute insights on data characteristics. The present paper describes an approach to textual analysis that generates extensive quantitative data on target documents, with output including frequency data on tokens, types, parts-of-speech and word n-grams. These analytical results enrich the available source data and have proven useful in several contexts as a basis for automating manual classification tasks. In the following, we introduce the Posit textual analysis toolset and detail its use in data enrichment as input to supervised learning tasks, including automating the identification of extremist Web content. Next, we describe the extension of this approach to Arabic language. Thereafter, we recount the move of these analytical facilities from local operation to a Cloud-based service. This transition, affords easy remote access for other researchers seeking to explore the application of such data enrichment to their own text-based data sets