Anger, Action and Hope: A Picture of Islamist Terrorists by Means of Qualitative Research, Sentiment Analysis and Machine Learning

Proceedings of ‏The 2nd World Conference on Research in Social Sciences

Year: 2021

DOI:

[Fulltext PDF]

Anger, Action and Hope: A Picture of Islamist Terrorists by Means of Qualitative Research, Sentiment Analysis and Machine Learning

Dr. Gianluca Tirozzi

 

ABSTRACT: 

This study is a qualitative and interpretative research that starts from a self-ethnographic work performed by the researcher thanks to his experience as a counterterrorism intelligence operator. The chosen technique is a content analysis aimed at detecting and evaluating the sentiment of a series of wiretapped conversations in a criminal proceeding made by the Italian Law Enforcement. For this purpose, the criminal investigation documents have been analysed following two approches, a traditional human analysis of contents and a technological one made by using the computer. In accordance with the new Information Technologies (IT), as that of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we produced a digital “emotional categorization” of the emerged sentiment. The aim of the research is to establish, thanks to a non-intrusive approach, whether and to what extent there is a spectrum of sentiments which characterizes the typical mood of terrorists. So, giving elements for establish a communicative channel between Intelligence, Security Forces on one hand and the terrorists on the other.

Keywords: Terrorism; Sentiment; Machine learning.