Visualizing Host - Nation Sentiment at the Tactical Edge

Measures of sentiment can help refine a Warfighter’s knowledge and understanding of an unfamiliar operational environment, for example, the sentiment of civilians and insurgents to the Army, its operations, or its adversaries. In addition, observing changes in expressed sentiment about topics over time may provide baselines from which to detect if and when important shifts in attitude occur triggering further investigation. The paper discusses new visualization techniques for displaying sentiment offered by social media analysis platforms currently under development by the Army. The sentiment analysis capabilities of these platforms were tested within the realistic military conditions of the C4ISR OTM field exercise using an operational scenario composed of diversified data sources including social media content. A human subjects experiment is planned for more fine-grained testing to better understand the advantages offered by different visualization approaches to sentiment analysis.