Observations about Content Shaping
October 3, 2011
Writer’s Note: Stephen E Arnold can be surprising. He asked me to review the text of his keynote speech at ISS World Americas October 2011 conference, which is described as “America’s premier intelligence gathering and high technology criminal investigation conference.” Mr. Arnold has moved from government work to a life of semi retirement in Harrod’s Creek. I am one of the 20 somethings against whom he rails in his Web log posts and columns. Nevertheless, he continues to rely on my editorial skills, and I have to admit I find his approach to topics interesting and thought provoking. He asked me to summarize his keynote, which I attempted to do. If you have questions about the issues he addresses, he has asked me to invite you to write him at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com. Prepare to find a different approach to the content mechanisms he touches upon. (Yes, you can believe this write up.) If you want to register, point your browser at www.issworldtraining.com.— Andrea Hayden
Research results manipulation is not a topic that is new in the era of the Internet. Information has been manipulated by individuals in record keeping and researching for ages. People want to (and can) affect how and what information is presented. Information can also be manipulated not just by people, but by the accidents of numerical recipes.
However, even though this is not a new issue, the information manipulation in this age is much more frequent than many believe, and the information we are trying to gather is much more accessible. I want to answer the question, “What information analysts need to know about this interesting variant of disinformation?”
The volume of data in a digital environment means that algorithms or numerical recipes process content in digital form. The search and content processing vendors can acquire as much or as little content as the system administrator wishes.
In addition to this, most people don’t know that all of the leading search engines specify what content to acquire, how much content to process, and when to look for new content. This is where search engine optimization comes in. Boosting a ranking in a search result is believed to be an important factor for many projects, businesses, and agencies.
Intelligence professionals should realize that conforming to the Webmaster guidelines set forth by Web indexing services will result in a grade much like the scoring of an essay with a set rubric. Documents should conform to these set guidelines to result in a higher search result ranking. This works because most researches rely on the relevance ranking to provide the starting point for research. Well-written content which conforms to the guidelines will then frame the research on what is or is not important. Such content can be shaped in a number of ways.
Algorithmic systems are reacting to content in a way that appears not to consider historical information. Search vendors themselves even seem unable to cope with relevance ranking that does much more than provide some general guidance. Basically, public Web search is broken. High volume flows and certain shaped messages can have some influence on how indexes are linking concepts.
I can offer working hypotheses on this state of affairs, such as the user of a search system may have a difficult time determining which information is “shaped” and which information is “objective.” Also, with directed content streams, we can make certain people, products, or ideas findable. Particularly in law enforcement or operational intelligence work, shaped content can amplify certain items of information and suppress others. Intelligence professionals need to consider that systems which “count” messages and extract concepts from public streams may be processing shaped information.
What’s clear is that the notion that search results are objective requires closer study and more thought. What’s the answer to the question, “What should information analysts know about search results information?” The answer is that in our digital world algorithmic systems can be manipulated to some degree. What seems to be the received wisdom may be little more than content shaped for a particular purpose and made available via Facebook, Twitter, and other channels. So far algorithms struggle to identify certain types of content objects.
Andrea Hayden, October 3, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, a publisher who creates original titles for its books and monographs
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