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Reaction in Iran: Mining Social Unrest in a Web. 2.0 World

by Curt Hall, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

The use of social networking sites by activists covering the recent Iranian election protests is a vivid example of how Web 2.0 can upset even the staunchest government's attempts to stifle dissent and the spread of "nonofficial" (i.e., uncensored) information. Twitter, in particular, has found extensive use by activists inside and outside of Iran, as well as by ordinary people who are worried or interested in what is happening inside the country. There has been so much of this activity, in fact, that the US Department of State asked Twitter management (which complied with the request) to hold off on carrying out scheduled systems maintenance in order to avoid any possibility of disrupting or limiting what has essentially become a key communications and organizational tool for Iranian postelection activism.

That Twitter has become such a tool of choice means that, for the first time in history, we may be able to develop a fairly accurate picture, in a relatively short amount of time, of just how deep and meaningful the level of dissent behind the protests in Iran really is. In fact, I believe that various intelligence agencies and think tanks around the world are using social media analysis software to mine sites such as Twitter (I'd certainly be surprised if the American intelligence gathering efforts weren't using these tools).

You may remember that I discussed the mining of social networking sites using sentiment analysis software a few weeks ago (see "Mining Social Media Via Sentiment Analysis," 9 June 2009). These tools, designed specifically for social media analysis, utilize advanced analytic capabilities -- such as clustering, pattern matching, and probabilistic modeling, combined with interactive visualization techniques -- to decipher meaning and conceptual patterns from text as well as rich media types (e.g., video, photos, audio). These tools analyze social media content to generate clusters of sentiment -- both positive and negative -- based on degrees of sentiment and tonality, which users can then interpret. In the commercial world your typical users include marketers and brand and product managers. But in the world of cloaks and daggers, typical users would range from intelligence analysts and country specialists in the security services, to foreign relations and policy analysts at the State Department. Most interesting, to me, in this case, is that these tools can be used to compute a sentiment score that, in effect, serves to capture an overall opinion of all the combined assessments from a particular social media site or collection of sites. Social media analysis tools can also be used to perform reputation analysis, which, in the right hands, can lead to detailed statistical analyses that identify emerging trends and their implications for the reputations of people, companies, and products, as well as governments and countries.

Social media analysis tools for analyzing social unrest offer exciting possibilities. For example, consider the value that such capabilities could bring when it comes to a government attempting to formulate a diplomatic response to the current Iranian situation (and other social disturbances). In effect, such analyses offer measurable insight that I doubt has ever really been possible before -- certainly not in such a near real-time manner.

Now, don't get me wrong: I know that different countries have been using their intelligence services to spy on each other's political, military, industrial, technology, and economic activities for ages. This includes tapping or intercepting all kinds of communications systems, ranging from phone, Internet, and satellite to microwave transmissions. But the use of social networking sites like Twitter by Iranian activists and ordinary citizens offers a dedicated pool of information that expresses sentiments, preferences, and other trends, which, I would strongly argue, to some degree, are helping to shape the Iranian peoples' postelection behavior and responses. The key question here is to what degree? Done correctly, the analysis of social networking sites could help answer this question, or at least provide greater understanding; in effect, helping to determine how "deep" the dissatisfaction runs.

On the other hand, and I would be remiss not to mention that there is almost always a dark side to the possible application of any new technology. The same tools used by those seeking to counter oppressive governments can be used by the very same governments to silence dissent. We've seen it with China, with the shutdown of social media sites around the time of the anniversary of the Tianamen Square protests. And it doesn't take much to envision how the Iranian security services might try to use social media analysis in their efforts.

I welcome your comments on this issue of the Cutter Edge and encourage you to send your insights on the market in general to comments@cutter.com.

-- Curt Hall, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium