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An Application of Natural Language Processing to Classify What Terrorists Say They Want

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  • Raj Bridgelall

    (Department of Transportation, Logistics, and Finance, College of Business, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58108, USA)

Abstract

Knowing what perpetrators want can inform strategies to achieve safe, secure, and sustainable societies. To help advance the body of knowledge in counterterrorism, this research applied natural language processing and machine learning techniques to a comprehensive database of terrorism events. A specially designed empirical topic modeling technique provided a machine-aided human decision process to glean six categories of perpetrator aims from the motive text narrative. Subsequently, six different machine learning models validated the aim categories based on the accuracy of their association with a different narrative field, the event summary. The ROC-AUC scores of the classification ranged from 86% to 93%. The Extreme Gradient Boosting model provided the best predictive performance. The intelligence community can use the identified aim categories to help understand the incentive structure of terrorist groups and customize strategies for dealing with them.

Suggested Citation

  • Raj Bridgelall, 2022. "An Application of Natural Language Processing to Classify What Terrorists Say They Want," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-15, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:11:y:2022:i:1:p:23-:d:723614
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Jaspersen, Johannes G. & Montibeller, Gilberto, 2020. "On the learning patterns and adaptive behavior of terrorist organizations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 282(1), pages 221-234.
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