Threat Escalation Model

Our team’s first MVP is a Threat Escalation Model, which outlines the escalation of a social movement. It includes the name of the stages, explanations of them, indicators that a country is experiencing the stage, and an idea of how it may begin to transition to the next stage. We created this model in hopes that analysts within SOCOM, as well as the partnering social media platform would utilize it. SOCOM would use the model to understand this specific type of unrest in order to identify it in a real-life situation. They could then instruct the social media analytics platforms to look for specific messages or individuals to track the situation via social media. With this data, SOCOM could potentially foresee the escalation of movements within regions based upon the sentiment and signposts found on social media. Utilizing this information, analysts could then generate hypotheses regarding the development of social movements. This would benefit the monitoring of social media activity within various regions by SOCOM and provide them with tools to develop and deliberate a response course of action to the instability.

Social Media Analytics Partnership

Our second MVP was created as a way of tracking, mitigating, and gathering data from various social media platforms simultaniously. We studied a series of social media analytics platforms that performed the type of analysis that SOCOM was looking for, and selected two unique companies to present as a proposed partnership. The first proposed partnership was with Babel Street. Babel Street’s Babel X program possesses the ability to collect data from 30 social media platforms in over 200 languages, assess the content and sentiment, and create an organized, easy to comprehend report for the user. This program would allow SOCOM to create searches and reports regarding the specific themes, entities, categories, and relationships of interest. The next proposed partnership was with the company Convergent AI. This company possesses a unique early detection system, called Streaming Predictive Analytics, that can be used to forecast future threat events. This feature would provide SOCOM with an early detection capability that could be utilized to mitigate and potentially prevent future threats.

Bot Creation

Our final MVP involved the introduction of bots to SOCOM as a means of counter-messaging. Bots are applications that perform automated tasks such as Googling information, ordering foor, and disseminating messages to large groups of people. By supporting the creation of bots and distributing them to local communities abroad under the name and support of a local government, activist group, or NGO, SOCOM would gain the ability to reach people in both rural and urban populations and spread messages effectively without the United States’ name being branded on the message. This could aid the integration and acceptance of the messages since they would be distributed from a trusted local entity.