Elections on the ground and in the air

1. Elections on the ground and in the air #SSLBC2012 Comparing Perches and Perspectives

2. What’s Up?

3. Why am I here? • Everyone else was busy • Excuse to visit campus • Wouldn’t have finished my thesis if it weren’t for Ellen • Follow and have worked in political risk • Helped managed election observation mission in Liberia, November 2011 • Currently, working at startup that uses predictive analysis and temporal analytics

4. Fields of Reference

5. Outline • Definitions, Perspectives, and Engaging • Futures & Forecasting Methodologies • Case Study: Egypt • Online Tools: Whither Twitter? • Temporal Vision

6. 1. Definitions, Perspectives, & Engaging Elections When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less. Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass

7. Four Ways to Manage Info

8. Definitions • Fact: evidence used in report • Opinion: biased perspective • Data: quantity, number, sum • Information: relationships of facts • Intelligence: organized information

9. Perspective, Parsed

10. Engaging Elections

11. Primary Actors & Key Stakeholders

12. Central to Elections

13. Characteristics and Categories

14. 4. Forecasting Methodologies It is hard to make predictions, especially about the future. Yogi Berra

15. Phillip K. Dick

16. Seven Attitudes Towards Future • Providential: what will be will be • Conventional: tomorrow will be much like today • Pessimism: decline from past ‘Golden Age’ • Discontinuity: the future will be nothing like the present • Optimism: faith in progress / technology cures all • Unknowable: futile to attempt to go beyond the present • Futurist: tempered optimism / the future is rich with possibility resulting from human planning and action Source Prof. Howard F. DidsburyJr

17. Forecasting Animals

18. Types of Political Risk

19. How to Make & Falsify Predictions Probability Time Range Impact

20. 2. Case Study: Egypt If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties. Francis Bacon

21. Time Window Analysis

22. Profile: Historic Milestones Egyptian Gov’t Ongoing Arrests of MB Members President Obama’s Cairo Speech As Opposition to Mubarak, MB Backed by ElBaradei MB Threatens Disruption of Elections • Past 5 Years • 3 Months prior • 1 Month following • Run-up • Up to Today

23. Watersheds pre-Jan25 • Past 5 Years • 3 Months prior to #Jan25 • 1 Month following #Jan25 • Run-up • Up to Today

24. Watersheds post-Jan25 • Past 5 Years • 3 Months prior to #Jan25 • 1 Month following #Jan25 • Run-up • Up to Today

25. Evolution: Political Landscape Source: Arabist.net

26. Change in FJP Composition Creation of FJP & Before Elections After Elections

27. When to Watch Mid to Late June: anticipated elections Mid-April: Candidacy Registration Period

28. Comparison of January 2012 Forecast – 6 Weeks Prior Actual – 4 Weeks During Revised – 6 Weeks After

29. Time-Textured January 2012 Forecast – 6 Weeks Prior Actual – 4 Weeks During Revised – 6 Weeks After

30. What and How to Watch

31. 4. Online Tools: Whither Twitter? Once we get out of the '80s, the '90s are gonna make the '60s look like the '50s. Dennis Hopper in Flashback

32. Seismic Shift in Intelligence Temporal Indexing of Web Enables Novel Intelligence

33. “North Korea apparently began pursuing a uranium enrichment program in 1996 at the latest” Text Is Loaded with Temporal Signals Drought and malnutrition hinder next spring’s expansion plans in Kabul... ...In June, officials said the network encryption was operational “ Dr Sarkar says the new facility will be operational by March 2014...” “2012 is the year when China will export more chemicals according to this source” “...opposition organizers plan to meet on Thursday to protest...” Unstructured text has analytic & predictive power.

34. Using Big Data for Prediction

35. New Tools: Electionista • web app for monitoring elections over Twitter across 110 different countries in 58 languages • Tweets are categorized geographically and cached so that users can scroll back

36. New Tools: WaPo Modifiable Model Uses 3 variables: • % change in GDP per capita from Q1 to Q3 • Average Approval in June, according to Gallup • 1 incumbent party candidate is sitting president, 0 if not SOURCES: Seth Hill, postdoctoral associate at Yale University; John Sides, associate professor at George Washington University; Lynn Vavreck, associate professor at UCLA; GRAPHIC: Jeremy Bowers, Emily Chow and Ezra Klein - The Washington Post. Published April 24, 2012.

37. New Tools: Google Portal

38. New Tools: Google Portal

39. New Tools: Yahoo Clues • How people search • Find most popular search terms • Compare trends between search terms

40. New Tools: RF & Temporal Analysis Search through time Sentiment analysis Temporal network analysis Temporal source scoring

41. Further Research for Twitter Data • Sentiment analysis of political tweets • Automatic detection of propaganda and disinformation • Automatic detection of sock puppets • Credibility checking • Basic research on Twitter demographics and automatic profiling of users with regards to demographic attributes • Basic research on user participation and self-selection bias

42. 5. Temporal Vision Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

43. Temporal Vision

44. Insight from Big Data • Watch (signal) • Have expectations about what is being watched (shift) • Know how is obscured (blindspot) • Identify out-of-the-ordinary happenings (outlier) • Conceive of fast-moving, far-reaching events (flashpoints) • Be able to correlate them with other interesting observations (pattern)

45. Thank You! E: munish@recordedfuture.com T: @whypurifly @politicalrisk L: linkd.in/munish

46. Nobody is wrong about the future and everybody is wrong about the past. Munish Puri