Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2017 Automatically Detecting the Resonance of Terrorist Movement Frames on the Web Ugochukwu O. Etudo Virginia Commonwealth University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd Part of the Management Information Systems Commons, and the Other Political Science Commons © The Author Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4926 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Ugochukwu O. Etudo 2017 All Rights Reserved AUTOMATICALLY DETECTING THE RESONANCE OF TERRORIST MOVEMENT FRAMES ON THE WEB A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University By Ugochukwu Etudo Director: Dr. Victoria Yoon Professor, Information Systems Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia May, 2017 Acknowledgement For Mummy and Daddy First and foremost, I would like to thank my parents who have always been my rock. I simply do not know what I would be without them. There is no sacrifice that they have not made for me, their patience is never ending. I love you both. Dr. Yoon, my dissertation chair, for inspiring and motivating me, for guiding me and for being the best mentor one could hope for. I thank you. My committee members, for taking the time to read this dense manuscript, for agreeing to be my mentors, for giving me invaluable advice, I thank you all. Mycal, Amy, Michelle, Mike, Bunga, Kim, Christiana, and Alex have always made me feel at home in America; they have believed in me when I did not believe in myself. I do not know that I would have had the mental fortitude to do this without them and so, I thank you. I Table of Contents Acknowledgement ........................................................................................................................... I Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... IV Chapter 1 – Introduction ................................................................................................................. 6 1.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 6 1.2 A Socio-Technical Web ........................................................................................................ 6 1.3 Web 2.0 ................................................................................................................................. 7 1.3.1 Online Communities ...................................................................................................... 9 1.3.2 Social Network Sites .................................................................................................... 10 1.4 Research Motivation – Lone Wolf Terrorism ..................................................................... 11 1.5 Research Issue ..................................................................................................................... 16 1.6 Research Questions ............................................................................................................. 19 1.7 Research Contributions and Significance ........................................................................... 22 1.8 Organization of Dissertation ............................................................................................... 25 Chapter 2 - Literature Review ....................................................................................................... 26 2.1 Structure of the Review ...................................................................................................... 26 2.1.1. A Note on Terrorism ................................................................................................... 27 2.2. Lone Wolf Terrorism ......................................................................................................... 30 2.3. Framing Theory ................................................................................................................. 39 2.3.1 Framing Features ......................................................................................................... 42 2.4. Detecting Lone Individual Radicalization on the Internet ................................................. 54 Chapter 3 – Research Method ....................................................................................................... 61 3.1. Structure of Chapter ........................................................................................................... 61 3.2. Research Objectives ........................................................................................................... 61 3.3. Design Science Research in Information Systems............................................................. 64 3.4. A Framework for Automatically Detecting the Resonance of Terror Movement Frames 65 3.5 Ontology Development Methodology ................................................................................ 67 II 3.6 Frame Discovery ................................................................................................................. 76 3.6.1. Named Entity Recognition (NER) .............................................................................. 78 3.6.2. Relation Extraction ..................................................................................................... 84 3.6.3. A Pipeline Architecture for Frame Discovery ............................................................ 88 3.7 Implementation ................................................................................................................... 89 3.7.1. Implementation of Terror Beliefs Ontology ............................................................... 89 3.7.3. Implementation of Frame Resonance Detection System .......................................... 116 Chapter 4 – Evaluation................................................................................................................ 122 4.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 122 4.2 Performance of FDS Classifiers........................................................................................ 123 4.3 Frame Resonance Detection Evaluation ........................................................................... 130 4.4. Automatic Identification of Radical Content ................................................................... 139 4.5. Detecting Potentially Triggering News ........................................................................... 151 4.6. Coordinating TBO, FDS and FRDS ................................................................................ 154 4.7. Summary .......................................................................................................................... 156 Chapter 5 - Conclusions .............................................................................................................. 157 5.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 157 5.2. Contributions.................................................................................................................... 159 5.3. Theoretical Implications .................................................................................................. 163 5.4. Practical Implications....................................................................................................... 167 5.4. Limitations and Future Work ........................................................................................... 169 References ................................................................................................................................... 173 III Abstract AUTOMATICALLY DETECTING THE RESONANCE OF TERRORIST MOVEMENT FRAMES ON THE WEB By Ugochukwu Etudo A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University, 2017 Director: Dr. Victoria Yoon Professor, Information Systems The ever-increasing use of the internet by terrorist groups as a platform for the dissemination of radical, violent ideologies is well documented. The internet has, in this way, become a breeding ground for potential lone-wolf terrorists; that is, individuals who commit acts of terror inspired by the ideological rhetoric emitted by terrorist organizations. These individuals are characterized by their lack of formal affiliation with terror organizations, making them difficult to intercept with traditional intelligence techniques. The radicalization of individuals on the internet poses a considerable threat to law enforcement and national security officials. This new medium of radicalization, however, also presents new opportunities for the interdiction of lone wolf terrorism. This dissertation is an account of the development and evaluation of an information technology (IT) framework for detecting potentially radicalized individuals on social media