Foreign Official Communication & Using Sentiment Analysis

Session Submission Type: Pre-conference Short Course Half Day

Session Description

This short course consists of two-parts, both of which take advantage of a new dataset a new dataset of Russian, Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian official communication and assessed sentiment called FOCUS Data [Foreign Official Communication Using Sentiment Data].

In part-one, participants learn how open source government and media reports can be collected using web scraping tools and how troves of textual and qualitative data can be analyzed and converted to quantitative measures using sentiment analysis. By the end of part-one, participants will be familiar with tools and concepts for web scraping, sentiment analysis, how to establish baseline information environments and sentiment, detect spikes in positive and/or negative sentiment, and methods for measuring the (in)effectiveness of a country’s or rival’s activities. The short course is designed for an academic audience, but the key concepts were previously taught at NATO workshops to military audiences and at Office of the Director of National Intelligence sponsored workshops.

Part-two is unique to this short-course. In part-two, participants will have the opportunity to use the FOCUS Data to enhance their own research. Participants can explore, and hopefully identify and analyze, potential relationships between information environments and verbal cues and behaviors and kinetic behaviors or operations, outcomes, or conflict processes of their interests, such as protests or militarized interstate disputes. In addition, regional, country, or rivalry scholars can use the FOCUS Data to enhance their case studies.

Sub Unit

• APSA Panels and All Meetings and Receptions

Chair

• Scott Fisher New Jersey City University

Presenter

• Graig R. Klein Leiden University