Open Source Information: Implications for Information Fusion in Contested Environments

Gathering information in anti-access, area denial locations will require new ways to collect and interpret information. It will also require a new emphasis on certain sources of information; for example, open source information (including the sources of information labeled "social media"). Open source information (including social media) can provide information on emergent behaviors (e. g., group mobilization), influential persons within a network and can be used to forecast future behaviors and events. Various analytic approaches exist or are being developed to make use of open source information, including social network analysis, language/sentiment/affect processing, statistical (correlational) analysis, behavior modeling and simulation, but gaps remain in enabling humans to do meaning making from the information, including meaning regarding threat. Open source information inherently comes from humans and thus there are a variety of issues: bias, trustworthiness, accuracy, representativeness. All of that makes it difficult to do source characterization and establish pedigree. Further, there is a natural tendency to discount or weight open source information less highly than information from traditional intelligence sources. Open source information provides important context for understanding a situation or threat, interpreting patterns and uncovering hidden meaning and elucidating the worldview of the individual and/or group; thus, any information fusion method should preserve salient contextual information.