PROTAGONIST TECHNOLOGY LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: AF193-CSO1

Description

Protagonist’s Narrative-based Emergent Crisis Detection (NECD) system uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) to predict the likelihood that a major crisis (e.g. war, coup d’ etat, civil disturbance) may emerge in a country of interest by tracking changes in the dominant narratives in that country. Every country has a set of “master” narratives that help define the shared beliefs and identity of large segments of its population (e.g., the “American Dream” narrative in the United States). These master narratives are invoked throughout the public discourse in response to a variety of national events, and in particular in times of upheaval or crisis. NECD’s ML algorithms learn to detect the master narratives in a given country’s media discourse (traditional media outlets and social media), quantify their strength, and track changes in their strength over time. NECD uses both current and historical data to correlate changes in the strength of these narratives with the emergence of crisis situations in the target country. Over time, NECD builds a predictive model that allows it to assess the probability that future crises will emerge, based on changes in the strength of the master narratives in the media discourse. NECD is powered by Protagonist’s Narrative Analytics® platform, which allows organizations to quantify and track narratives in media conversations, and Protagonist’s Master Narratives® methodology and knowledge base, which provides a repeatable process for identifying master narratives and currently contains the master narratives of over 35 countries.