Guide to finding Breaking News like Intelligence Analysts

Editor’s note: Originally posted at - opinion.red24

It should be noted that there are industry specific tools for finding breaking events; however, in an effort to add value to all readers, this article will focus on open-source breaking news collection and analysis.

Breaking News

In the field of intelligence, political and security analysis, gathering and managing relevant and up-to-date information is a core competency. The key word for us is breaking news. Although there are wonderful sources to find popular news, such as Digg and Reddit, and although print media is not necessarily as dead as my Myspace account, these sources are too slow. The idea is to find events faster than this, as they are breaking, so that our analysts can decide if the specific event is relevant. In other words, we need a speedy, but accurate, detection method for finding news that could potentially impact on our clients. Finding breaking news is not only important for the intelligence industry, but for any industry or individual that wishes to stay up to date with global developments. As such, this article on how to find breaking news will begin on broad terms and then narrow in focus, fitting the needs of both the casual newshound and the expert security analyst.

The Big Boys

Firstly, there are a number of big players that warrant mention. These are the news media industry leaders, and although they might not always be the first to run stories, they are generally more reliable than smaller news agencies. However, while an agency may be large, it is not always reliable (I am looking at you, Fox and Xinhua). There are also concerns that press accuracy, specifically in the US, is in decline; hopefully robots will fix this soon. A general tip to follow is that if one is unsure about a source, look for the origin of the story and find at least one more source to corroborate. A good dictum to live by here is Narayan Murthy’s adage: "In God We Trust; everyone else must bring data." Below is a list of news sources I generally find to be more reliable.

My top picks:

• Al Jazeera
• AP
• BBC
• Breaking News
• CNN
• Reuters
• RT

Keep it local

In South Africa we have a saying: local is lekker (local is nice/good). This also applies when finding breaking news. Local and regional news agencies are often the first to run breaking news stories. Although this might sound like common sense, if one is interested in a specific area, it is important to make sure to follow the news agencies from that region. These sources are often invaluable. Even If the news is in a foreign language, just translate the whole site!

At red24, we are split into specific regions. I focus on analysis of South America; as such, below I have provided a breakdown of some of my regional/local sources for Brazil. Other regional sources can also be found here and here.

Latin American Herald Tribune

Jornal Do Brasil

The Rio Times

Tribuna de Metropolis

Social media is your friend

Probably the most powerful tool at your disposal for catching breaking news is Twitter and other social media (SM) channels. People tweet and post about everything, and if you can catch relevant leads before the crowd, you are area already ahead of the game. As with the above-mentioned sources, not all Tweets are equal, and one has to be careful with what one believes. However, optimising Twitter with the help of social media manger programmes and proper twitter lists can help you to weed out unreliable content and stay on top of the news. Furthermore, a quick search in Twitter itself can also provide you with alternative and updated sources.

My favourite SM Tools

• HootSuite - Manage all your SM accounts
• TweetDeck – Manage Twitter
• Trendsmap – Visually display Twitter trends
• Buffer – Optimises your Tweet Schedule

For more useful SM-management tools, please click here.

Twitter Lists I use daily

• BreakingNews
• Global Risk List
• Red24 Regional Analysts
• Americas Risk
• Travel Security

The humble keyword search

Often overlooked, but never to be underestimated, is the keyword search. Depending on your industry, there are multiple significant words that can guide your search for relevant news. You can bookmark a number of Google searches with your keywords, or you can set up alerts, so that these keywords can find you. Keyword searches with Twitter are also essential and the tools above can help you set up these permanent searches. Please note that if you are looking for news in a specific area where English is not the dominant language, by all means search in the local language and on the local version of Google. Here is an example of a common keyword search that I use for finding strikes in Brazil.

List of some the keywords that I search for daily:

• Clashes
• Attack
• Protest
• Strike
• Killed
• Explosion
• Flooding
• Fire
• Demonstration
• Strike
• Kidnap
• Injured

What the future holds

As technology improves, more accurate and speedy event detection and analysis software is emerging. Within the field of machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) there are exciting developments that have the potential to change how we collect and analyse news events.

One tool that journalists are already using is social media analysis software that extrapolates meaningful patterns from user-generated content. This software then alerts journalists to potential breaking news automatically. A great example of this type of software is Dataminr, a New York-based company that has a strategic partnership with Twitter, which allows for analysis of the full Twitter Firehose of public tweets (basically all tweets).

Then there are emerging machine-coded automated data gathering methods that “crawl” through all open-source media and look for specific relevant events in real time. These can be used for forecasting human societal-scale behaviour,which is the long-term goal of programmes such as the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT). Also, there are programmes such as the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), which attempts to create a full database of political violence data for developing states. Both these programmes offer real-time analysis and give a glimpse into the future of event detection.

Takeaways

Hopefully you’ve learned some new tricks of the trade for finding relevant breaking news as fast and accurately as possible. However, finding the news is only the first step. The next step is analysing the data, and if you are looking for more guidelines on intelligence analysis, there are some insightful books that every analyst should read.

A final tip for finding breaking news is to embrace change. There are always better, faster and more accurate tools emerging for catching breaking events. If you learn to love change and can keep up with the development of technology, you're on your way to thinking like an intelligence analyst!

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What has been your experience with finding Breaking News? Are there some tactics you’re using besides the ones mentioned here? I’d be interested to hear your experiences and what you’re up to. Please do share in the comments.

Follow me @LutzBarend

opinion.red24

http://opinion.red24.com/

For more frequent updates and news and views on global political and security events, please visit red24's blog, which I manage.

http://opinion.red24.com/

Optimising Twitter for Political and Security Risk Analysis

Gathering and managing relevant and up to date information is one of the key competencies needed in political/security risk analysis. With the advent of social media sites such as Twitter, the collection and management of information is becoming easier by the day. Below, I describe how to optimise your Twitter usage for gathering relevant breaking news. This can be used for risk analysis purposes or any other job in which up to date global regional or local news is required.

I have chosen to use HootSuite as a platform for managing my social media sites, but there are many other choices such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, etc.

Process for using HootSuite to manage tweets

1.     Sign up for account at http://hootsuite.com

2.     Add you Twitter account and or other social media accounts to Hootsuite

3.     Go to my Twitter account's lists: https://twitter.com/Barendlutz/lists

4.     Subscribe to the lists you want

5.     Go to you Hootsuite Dashboard and add streams for the lists you want to follow

* You can create your own lists or find other lists that are more specific to your interests online, my lists are just broad lists that I created by looking at what other people are following on Twitter, but they will be updated as I find more useful Tweeps.

* If you are still unsure about this process you can look at this presentation for further clarification.

Other Useful tools.

In addition to Hootsuite hare are a number of other sources that make online data more manageable are:

1.     Monitter

Monitor multiple keyword searches from Twitter in real-time.

2.     TwitterMap

You search for keywords and it shows you where tweets containing those words come form on a map. (Search for words such as fatalities, clashes, protests, strikes)

3.     TrendsMap

This site shows you a global map of trending topics. It gives a bit too much information I think, the one above is more useful.

4.     Alchemy API

Lastly there is a demo program which analyses news articles and extracts the useful info. This is just a demo, but you can add a web link and then it extracts all the details automatically.  For example try adding this link: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/60398/World/Region/Iraq-attacks-kill-seven,-inmate-detonates-explosiv.aspx

I am sure that everyone has a specific methodology which they prefer for viewing and collecting information. I have found that the method described above works well for me, but if you have another method or comments/advice on mine, please feel free to let me know.

Capitalism is Awesome

I found a online auction site which I think deserve mentioning as it is probably the best/smartest moneymaking idea I have ever seen. I do not know if this is normal for online auctions, but it is such a good idea.

The site is called Smokoo and what they do is this:

There is a countdown clock. You pay 5 South African Rand for a bid option. Every time you bid the price goes up 1 cent or 5 cents and a few seconds is added to the clock. When the clock runs out the item is sold and you "win" the bid.

Now what happens is that each product is sold really cheaply. For example an Ipad 64 gig was sold for R510.25, which is amazing. But behind the scenes each bid brought in R5 for the action house and therefore R 51 025, 00 !!! for an R11 000 Ipad.

Therefore Capitalism is awesome!

Bloody Agent Remover

Via - watkykjy.co.za

A Dream whithin a dream

Part 1:


Part 2:


Man easily becomes stuck in a habitual world of normality and similarity. Without realising we are trapped in a box, a train, a lifestyle or an exquisitely constructed giant metal apparatus. This is an experimental film inspired by the philosophy of Epicurus and Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “A Dream Within A Dream”.

Edgar Allan Poe writes in his “A Dream Within A Dream” poem that his life is as a dream within a dream. There is nothing real that he can hold onto. And when he enters his dreams he feels as if it is more real than his life. He asks:

“Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?”

In the film I used this dream within a dream idea as a basis for examining the philosophy of Epicurus. I propose that the ancient philosophy of the Greek can pull one from this perpetual dream. Epicurus therefore, with his philosophy of happiness provides us with a cure for the lifeless dream world that Poe explains.
In the film we have a man whose life is also like a dream. He his stuck in “utter reality”. Now we launch a thought experiment and the narrator tells us that the philosophy of happiness of Epicurus will be injected into the man’s dreams. So we enter his dreams.

The philosophy of Epicurus is quite simple. It consists of prescriptive guidelines to a happy life. He believed in a world where pleasure equals happiness and pain equals unhappiness. You gain pleasure mainly in three ways. Firstly, through freedom of thought and personal reflection on your own life. Secondly, through friendship. He believed that you should always surround yourself with good friends. Thirdly, through freedom of person. This is when one can be free to do what one likes and is not bounded by factors such as the state, police, etc. The greatest challenge to these steps towards happiness, is advertisements, according to Epicurus. Advertisements lead one to believe that one can gain the 3 requirements by buying something. This he believes is a false sense of happiness and will soon fade.

This film aims to show, with the help of existential philosophy, a route to escape the normality of life and to gain a sense of person and happiness. At the end of the film the man wakes up again into the “real” world. He now knows that he has had an important dream, but he simply cannot remember what it was about. I believe that many people live their lives like this. The solution to a happier life has been given almost 2400 years ago already. This might not be the full and final answer to happiness, but it should at least be a step towards it.

It was exiting, but challenging to make my first short film. As the film making progressed I realised the errors I have made and learned from them. For example, filming in a mall in Hong Kong, without permission was not the smartest idea. The security chased me from floor to floor. The whole process is much more intricate than I imagined beforehand. In order to get everything to happen on the right time and at the right place was quite difficult. Still it was an immensely pleasurable experience and I am definitely looking forward to make some more movies soon.

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