Turning to
math and social media to protect us from a possible terrorist strike, a team of
researchers has come up with an algorithm that
they think might predict potential attacks.
Physicist Neil
Johnson of the University of Miami led a team that created a mathematical model
to sift order from the chaotic pro-terrorism online universe, the New York
Times reported.
In the study, the
team searched for pro-Islamic State posts each day from mid-2014 until August
2015, mining mentions of beheadings and blood baths in multiple languages on
Vkontakte, Europe's largest Russia-based social network site.
Ultimately, they
devised an equation that tries to explain the activity of Islamic State sympathizers
online and might, they say, eventually help predict attacks that are about to
happen.
Experts who study
terrorism and online communication said that the new research was informative
and that they appreciated that the authors would make their data available to
other researchers.
However, they
cautioned that the actions of terrorist groups are extremely difficult to
anticipate and said more information was needed, especially to substantiate any
predictive potential of the team's equation.
"This is an
interesting approach, this is a potentially valuable approach, and more
research should be done on the approach," said co-author J. M. Berger,
adding "But to jump ahead to the utility of it, I think, takes more
work."
Representative
Image
Source:
ANI
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