Social Network Analysis to Combat Terrorism: 2015 Paris Attacks

Abstract

A series of attacks shook Paris in the year 2015. They were well-coordinated attacks by the terrorist organization ISIL. An in-depth analysis of the attacks is presented in this chapter. This work is divided into several stages and every stage progresses into the next stage by adding more information useful for the upcoming stage. Initially, data about terrorists is gathered from newspapers and online bulletins. The collected data is then transformed into a network which is created using an adjacency matrix. Strength of the relationship between the involved terrorists is also factored in while creating the network. To gather insight into this network, centrality measures are calculated. This analysis brought forward interesting facts such as who were the most important person(s) in the network and removing which person(s) would cripple the network. The final phase of this process was a Twitter analysis of the Paris attacks based on four keywords related to the attack. This further revealed a few facts which were unreported in major newspapers. Some conclusions and understanding of the attacks after an in-depth data analysis of Paris attacks are also reported.