Enhancing Soft Power: using cyberspace to enhance Soft Power

“…challenge accepted paradigms to propose new ways of fighting from air, space, and cyberspace.”
- General Stephen Lorenz

General Stanley McChrystal
“It’s not the number of people you kill,
it’s the number of people you convince.”

Enhancing Soft Power (ESP)
Analysis and Situational Awareness over network of
Computers, Sensors, People, and Content
for enhancing Soft Power
AmitSheth, LexisNexis Eminent Scholar
Director, Ohio Center of Excellence on Knowledge-enabled Computing (Kno.e.sis)
Wright State University
http://knoesis.org

Network Visualization
Consider all challenges that can be addressed by visualization in the cyberspace
Cyberspace = {computers, sensors, people, conversations}
For issues effecting security in cyberspace and to enhancing military’s capacity to project soft power
So broadly, People-Content-Network Visualization

Institutions Involved
Ohio Center of Excellence on Knowledge-enabled Human Centered Computing (Kno.e.sis), UCI (Ramesh Jain), OSU Faculty in Visual Analytics [Srini Parthasarthy]
WSU Faculty in Internet/WWW, Semantic Web, Sensor Web, Social Computing, Network Security [Bin Wang] , Visualization [Tom Wischgoll], and Cognitive Science [John Flach,…]
Optionally, faculty at Indiana University Center for Complex Networks & Systems, and Purdue University
Preliminary thoughts on COE on Enhancing Soft Power (ESP)

Networks in Cyberspace
Networks in Cyber Space
Sensor Networks
Computer Networks
Social Networks

Networks and Cyber Security
Cyber Security
Sensor Networks
Computer Networks
Social Networks

Networks and Soft Power
Computer Networks
Sensor Networks
Soft Power
Citizen Sensing
Social Networks

Hard Power – “Carrots and Sticks”

Soft Power: “The Second Face of Power”
“Affect behavior through attraction”
“Soft power is attractive power”
Also called cooptive power:
the ability to shape the preferences of others
getting others to want the outcomes that we want

How important is soft power?
Henry Crumpton– CIA covert-op leader
Hard power – 25%
Soft power – 75%
Wield soft power (to counter terror groups in Iraq and Afghanistan) through
Empowerment of native people
Developmental and educational projects
Measure impact of
policy alternatives
development initiatives

Using soft power and monitoring its effects
One approach – Analyze online social networks
Ohio State
Knucomp
Visualize the interaction graphs formed in social networks
(more later)
Aggregate social perceptions
Analyze with a focus theme
Use spatio-temporal aspects
Twitris
How hard is this?

Twitris: Architecture

Twitris: Features and Research Issues
Data intensive
Processing and storage of data Vs meta data
Timeliness
Live resource aggregation
Near real time
Tunable spatio-temporal scope/weights
Global Iran election Vs. Local health care debate
Parallel programming,
cloud computing (map-reduce)
Information retrieval,
natural language processing (harder with casual text), machine learning
Semantic Web technologies,
Web 2.0 tools

Twitris: Ongoing investigations
For a given viral “tweet” study
network of people who reply or re-tweet
do this across space and theme
variation of content
HCR – Health care reform, IE – Iran election, ISWC – Intl. Semantic Web conference

Sparse and Dense ReTweet Graphs - Call for action vs. Information Sharing tweets
Showing retweet (forward chains) of a viral tweet in the HealthCare Debate data
“Join @MarkUdall @RitterForCO and @BennetForCO to support an up-or-down vote on the public option http://tr.im/Cm2u”

Sparse and Dense ReTweet Graphs - Call for action vs. Information Sharing tweets
Showing retweet (forward chains) of a viral tweet in the Iran data
“Iran Election Crisis: 10 Incredible YouTube Videos http://bit.ly/vPDLo”
Both network and content are important in studying social dynamics (here, information diffusion)

Analysis of Conversation and Chatter
Use language constructs to analyze sentiments and intentions

Visual Analytics for Dynamic Interaction Networks
Model social networks as graphs
People are nodes
Their interactions are edges
Groups of connected people are communities (clusters)
Edge weights capture relative importance
Addition and deletion of edges and nodes represent changes in the network
Challenges
Identify and localize changing portions of the network
Characterize the types of changes and potential causes
Facilitate interactive interrogation

Events and Behaviors in Interaction Networks
Critical Events from a snapshot to the next
A cluster stays intact
Two clusters merge or a cluster splits
A new cluster forms or an existing one dissolves
A node joins or leaves a cluster
Behavioral measures (modeled as real numbers)
Stability and Sociability of a node
Influence of node on other nodes
Popularity of a cluster

Paradigm: Overview, Zoom, Filter, and DoD
Event detection proceeds iteratively:
Events are computed from time Ti to time Ti+1
Clusters at time Ti compared with those at Ti+1
Use only nodes that are active at either time which leads to significant time savings.
Views (map normalized measures -> colors)
Coarsening using multilevel hierarchies of nodes
Graph view, community view, event view, and node view

Network Visualizer Architecture

Coarse View of a Wikipedia Subgraph

Zoom and Filter Snapshot

Event View: Importance of Ranking

Semantic Annotations for any resource in cyberspace (message, text, images, and AV)
Annotate resources with meaningful metadata
Use the metadata to process and elicit information from a given set of resources

Automatic Semantic Annotation
Value-added Semagix Semantic Tagging
COMTEX Tagging
Content
‘Enhancement’
Rich Semantic
Metatagging
Limited tagging
(mostly syntactic)
Value-added
relevant metatags
added by Semagix
to existing
COMTEX tags:
Private companies
Type of company
Industry affiliation
Sector
Exchange
Company Execs
Competitors
© Semagix, Inc.

Annotating Sensor Data

“NSF Playoff”
Embedding Metadata in
multimedia, a/v or sensor data
Video
Enhanced
Digital Cable
MPEG-2/4/7

GREAT
USER
EXPERIENCE
MPEG
Encoder
MPEG
Decoder
Retrieve Scene Description Track
Create Scene Description Tree
License metadata decoder and
semantic applications to
device makers
Channel sales
through Video Server Vendors, Video App Servers, and Broadcasters
Node = AVO Object
Scene
Description
Tree
Enhanced
XML
Description
Produced by: Fox Sports
Creation Date: 12/05/2000
League: NFL
Teams: Seattle Seahawks,
Atlanta Falcons
Players: John Kitna
Coaches: Mike Holmgren,
Dan Reeves
Location: Atlanta
Voqutte/Taalee
Semantic
Engine
“NSF Playoff”
Node
Metadata-rich
Value-added Node
Object Content Information (OCI)

Semantic Annotations for Event Visualization
Knoesis’ prior work on Semantic Event Tracking
Extract event information from Internet resources
Visualize event data through space, time, and theme
SET

Way Ahead: Semantic Annotations for Networks
“Richer” communication paradigm
Liberates parties from needing to know exact IP addresses
Routing based on Semantic Concepts
Improved efficiency
Single or very few traversals of network stack
Content is routed by the physical network based on the Semantics
Enhanced security and control
Control based on message content in addition to origin (or destination)
Better accountability and audit: after identifying hacking, how did Google know Chinese & Tibetan human rights advocates were targeted? Or what could attackers be after? What could they have learned?

Semantics Aware Networking

Way Ahead: Content Analysis to Identify Radicalization or Recruiting
Collaborate with linguists, social scientists, and other computer scientists to analayze social network content (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace) to weed out radical elements.
Alleged Fort Hood Shooter’s online post 6 months before the massacre
“If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory”
- Maj. NidalMalikHasan

Way Ahead: Use and Detect misuse of Soft Power
Web sites in China are required to employ people who monitor and delete objectionable content; tens of thousands of others are paid to “guide” bulletin board Web exchanges in the government’s favor.
Use social network analysis to sense sentiments
Iranian reaction to Hilary Clinton’s statements on the election.
Impact of giving (partial) control to Pakistan to operate drones in the area

Significant Infrastructure
Whole-Body Laser
Range Scanner
VERITAS
stereoscopic 3D
visualization
AVL
NMR

Enhancing Soft Power: using cyberspace to enhance Soft Power

by Amit Sheth on Apr 27, 2010

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Enhancing Soft Power: using cyberspace to enhance Soft Power — Presentation Transcript