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Situational awareness in digital environments: Discover fluctuations and trends in online discussions about violence, gang culture, and violent extremism
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences.
2024 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

The rapid development and expanding possibilities within digital realms, including discussion forums, have revolutionized the way we communicate and express thoughts and opinions. Previous studies indicate that certain individuals involved in acts like terrorist attacks have drawn inspiration and acquired knowledge from online platforms. Evaluating online threats in digital environments could potentially preempt future attacks and gain a deeper understanding of trends and fluctuations. The goal of this research was to develop an artefact in the form of a framework for enhancing situational awareness in digital environments. The methodology was based on Design Science Research and a mixed methods approach was used with both qualitative and quantitative measures. The developed artefact was named Threat-Aware: A tool for creating awareness of Threat and Violence Online. Threat-Aware consisted of four steps; first, a funnel to distinguish all violent posts in a data set. Second, a filter function sorting the data into the three categories: Gang Culture, Extremism and Incels and Other. The third step consisted of a threat classification using an existing tool named Hatescan, which provided an assigned Threat Probability Score to each line in the data set. The fourth and last step gave the possibility to filter posts related to geographical components, for example Areas or Events. This framework represents a novel contribution to the field of situational awareness, offering new methods for categorizing and assessing online threats. The evaluation showed that Threat-Aware fulfilled all stated requirements and created an opportunity for a user to sort and analyze data. There are however some limitations, such as the inability of text analysis to distinguish context as well as the limitation of words often having multiple meanings. Future research could explore various approaches to improve the Threat-Aware’s capabilities as well as broaden its scope. By developing the framework further, improvements of guidelines for reducing false positives and decrease the influence of current limitations could also be conducted.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2024.
Keywords [en]
Situational Awareness, Text Analysis, Gang Culture, Violence, Extremism
National Category
Computer Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-242811OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-242811DiVA, id: diva2:1955744
Available from: 2025-04-30 Created: 2025-04-30

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Jäderberg Stahre, Karin
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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

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Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf