Mapping of terrorist activities in Kenya using sentiment analysis

Abstract

Terrorism has become a subject of concern to many people in Kenya today. Corruption, porous border and lack of government in the neighboring Somali, have made Kenya a potential target for terrorists’.The advancement in technology has brought a new era in criminal activities where Online Social Networks such as Twitter,Facebook has driven the increase use of the internet by criminal organizations and their supporters for a wide range of purposes including recruitment, financing, propaganda, incitement and gathering and dissemination of information for criminal activities such as threats, incitement to imminent violence, harassing speech, libelous speech etc.Although the Kenya government improved its ability to fight terrorism the changing pattern of terrorist activities, human errors and delayed crime analyses have given criminals more time to destroy evidence and escape arrest.The main objective is to test and validate a technique that can be used to establish crime patterns associated with terrorist activities using sentiment information deduced from twitter data.The data collected will then be used as features for training and development of the algorithm which will then be used to carry out real time mapping of terrorist activities. The algorithm’s performance will be then measured for accuracy.