Exploiting Social Networks for the Prediction of Social and Civil Unrest: A Cloud Based Framework

The current worldwide recession has led to a reduction in spending and a tightening of budget at all levels. Measures such as cuts in wages, lower pension pay-outs and rising unemployment seem to go hand-in-hand with politically motivated violence and social instability. In recent times, certain areas of Europe have been met with widespread protests, strikes and riots such as the ones in United Kingdom (UK), Spain, and Greece. Events over the last few years in the UK have demonstrated that people are willing to go to extreme lengths for their voice to be heard. Researchers in this area are still unclear about what leads to social instability and violent protests. How can these events be predicted? What tactics can be deployed by law enforcement agencies to manage these events? Social Networks such as Twitter and Facebook have been proven to be useful tools for demonstrators to organise themselves. Instead of limiting access to these services during any future disorders, filtered information fed from these media can be used by law enforcement agencies not only to prevent using them for criminal behaviour, but also to predict these events and develop tactics to manage future protests. This papers reviews the most cited research in this area and proposes a novel theoretical framework based on digital forensics principles combined with Cloud technology, followed by a sample practical implementation for illustration.