GroupPulse - Monitoring and Tracking Group Dynamics in Online Social Media

The past decade has seen an explosion in online social media, such as blogs, forums, twitter, and so forth. This online information can give us insights into groups and communities--what are their "hot button" issues, how are they responding to current events, and how are they likely to react in the future. With the advance and proliferation of technology, online groups and communities now include populations of high importance to the U.S. military planners, such as students in Iran, social conservatives in Saudia Arabia, and housewives in Egypt -- all sorts of groups throughout the Middle East. Currently, there is a great deal of information in social media that could be exploited for the benefit of military planners, but it is infeasible to monitor social media channels and provide simple, realtime assessment, analysis and predictive capabilities. This is the problem which we address in this proposal.