Social Media Analysis for Conflict Management & Resolution
Thursday, March 20
4:30 PM- 6:00 PM
GHC 6115
Chris McNaboe
Carter Center
The Syrian conflict is the first conflict of its scale to take place in such a connected society. Since the crisis began, Syrians have uploaded approximately 500,000 videos related to the fighting in their country. In this talk, I will discuss how human-generated data from a small subset of this information has helped track the formation of over 5,000 armed groups throughout the country, the evolving connections between them, the activities they engage in, and the 100,000+ fighters they represent. Additionally, I will discuss my thoughts on how online connectivity is changing the ways conflicts and wars are waged, and how emerging technologies can help the international community more effectively respond to these new challenges and opportunities. I am particularly interested in discussing how machine learning tools and techniques might help improve the extraction and analysis of information from social media—especially videos—in fragile and conflict-plagued regions.