Detecting Multipliers of Jihadism on Twitter

Outline Introduction Violent jihadi on Twitter Data Detecting jihadi Results Future Work

Detecting Multipliers of Jihadism on Twitter

1Amendra Shrestha

1 Lisa Kaati 1Enghin Omer 2 Nico Prucha

1Uppsala University

2King’s College London

November 14, 2015



1 IntroductionInternet and violent extremism

2 Violent jihadi on Twitter

3 Data

4 Detecting jihadi

5 Results

6 Future Work



Internet and violent extremism


• media mujahideen

• supporters of jihadist groups

• ”battlefield for jihad, a place for missionary work, a field ofconfronting the enemies of God”

• recruit new members

• financing and travelling activities

• generate anxiety




Detecting terrorism propaganda

• Safe Internet - combat terrorist propaganda and relatedviolent extremist activities on the internet

• Europol IRU - identify and refer relevant online contenttowards concerned internet service providers and supportMember States with operational and strategic analysis.

• But.... it is too much out there!





Is it possible to automatically detect ISISmessages on Twitter?


Important Jihadi on Twitter


Shumukh al-Islam forumprovided a ”Twitter Guide”

@StragegyAffairs

@JbhatALnusra

@e3teqal

@1400year

@IsraeliAffairs

@mujtahidd

0 1

• @mujtahiddTweets on a range of topics, uses twoimportant names Harith and Hummam(Lion and cultivator) in profile image.

• @IsraeliAffairsMuslim, Arab citizen, works on behalfof his country. A diplomat, translatorand researcher in Israeli affairs.

• @1400yearArabic name is gharib fi wadanihi, thestranger in his own country.Rachid Nekkaz as profile image.


Location of timezone : Important Jihadi

• time of tweets

• user are given option of entering a nearby city to set thetimezone



Language used : Important Jihadi

• ascertainded from Twitter API.

• some user tweet more than in one language



Followers of important jihadi

• 129,905 users follow more than one important Jihadi’ account


79% follow between two and five of important jihad

45%Follow only two of the important jihadiaccounts

504users follow more than 40 of important jihadiaccounts


Language used : Followers of important jihadi

• based on 504 users which follows 40 or more important jihadiaccount



Frequent followers of important jihadi

• Followers of 65 important jihadi



Hashtags used to download data



Misleading tweets



Jihadist networks



Example of tweet



Most frequent words



Detecting jihadi

• Data dependent features

• Data independent features

• Arabic and English



Data dependent features

• Frequently used words

• Frequently used hashtags

• Frequently used letter bigrams

• Frequently used word bigrams



Data independent features

• Word length

• Letters

• Digits

• Punctuation

• Function words

• Hashtag

• Emotion words

• Time profile


} Stylometry features


Tweep & Tweet



Experiment

• Classify tweeps and tweets

• Multiple language : English and Arabic

• Tweeps• Pro-English : 93• Random-English : 742• Pro-Arabic : 81• Random-Arabic : 256

• Tweets• Pro-English : 27,753• Random-English : 60,000• Pro-Arabic : 16,000• Random-Arabic : 45,013

• AdaBoost



Result


Arabic tweeps

English tweeps


Arabic tweets


Precision Accuracy Recall0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Indep Dep All


English tweets


Precision Accuracy Recall0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Indep Dep All


Most important features


Arabic

• on

• about

• today

• that

English

• islamic state

• isis

• the islamic

• #iraq


Analysing Arabic Tweets

• complexity of the Arabic language

• one word in Arabic to reference a complex theological concept

• specialized way of expression



Future Work

• semi-automatic tool

• more diverse and complex dataset

• improve result for Arabic tweets

• ageing factor of radical tweets




Thank You

Detecting Multipliers of Jihadism on Twitter

Data & Analytics