July 1, 2006

Military to Study Blogs

This report says the Air Force Office of Scientific Research recently began funding a new research area that includes a study of blogs. And the researchers think bloggers may have fueled those riots in the Muslim world over the publication of cartoons of Mohammad in a Danish newspaper.

Blog research may provide information analysts and warfighters with invaluable help in fighting the war on terrorism. Dr. Brian E. Ulicny, senior scientist, and Dr. Mieczyslaw M. Kokar, president, Versatile Information Systems Inc., Framingham, Mass., will receive approximately $450,000 in funding for the 3-year project entitled "Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and Credible Information."

One of the problems analysts may have with blog monitoring, Ulicny noted, is there is too much actionable information for the analyst to properly analyze. "We are developing an automated tool to tell analysts what bloggers are most interested in at a point in time," Ulicny said.

More troubling is the section of the story in which the military researcher suggest that bloggers may be partly responsible for the riots over those Danish newspaper's Mohammed cartoons.

"Blog entries have a different structure," Ulicny said. "They are typically short and are about something external to the blog posting itself , such as a news event. It's not uncommon for a blogger to simply state, 'I can't believe this happened,' and then link to a news story."

In this example, Ulicny said, there might not be much of interest in the blog posting, yet the fact that the blogger called attention to this story can be significant to understanding what matters. A good example, he said, is the recent furor in the Muslim world over the publication of cartoons of Mohammad in a Danish newspaper. The original publication wasn't much noticed in the West, but bloggers discussed this event that possibly contributed to riots worldwide.

Thanks to Ben Cunningham for the link.

If you people only knew how much of this blog's content comes from stuff he emails me... you'd be saying what I often say: Ben Cunningham oughta have a blog!