Eco:effective Communication Online

The purpose of this research was to develop methods that could assess the effectiveness of communications destined for members of specific diacultural groups, as exemplified by their collective presence on Internet social media, specifically blogs. The research was conducted using data collected from Internet blogs representing opposing cultural groups, and containing (presumably) opposing value systems. Analysis of the collected data led to construction of a simple, stochastic model for representing these value systems. Subsequently, improvements were made using a machine learning approach, which enables us to capture community specific valuation models. These models facilitate comparison between new messages and the target community, reporting mismatches in valuations of concepts between the two. ECO technology represents an advance in methods in cross-cultural communication, where the content of new messages has to be carefully balanced with the value system of the target community, and we expect this technology to be useful for influence operations, advertising, and national security.