Rapid modeling and analyzing networks extracted from pre-structured news articles

In the face of uprisings and revolutions happening in several countries within short period of time (Arab Spring 2011), the need for fast network assessments is compelling. In this article we present a rapid network assessment approach which uses a vast amount of pre-indexed news data to provide up-to-date overview and orientation in emerging and ongoing incidents. We describe the fully automated process of preparing the data and creating the dynamic meta-networks. We also describe the network analytical measures that we are using to identify important topics, persons, organizations, and locations in these networks. With our rapid network modeling and analysis approach first results can be provided within hours. In the explorative study of this article we use 108,000+ articles from 600+ English written news sources discussing Egypt, Libya, and Sudan within a time period of 18 months to show an application scenario of our approach. In particular we are looking at the involvement of other countries and their politicians during time periods of major incidents.