Analyzing Sentiment Markers Describing Radical and Counter-Radical Elements in Online News

In this study, we aim to obtain “natural groupings” of 151 local non-government organizations and institutions mentioned in a news archive of 77,000 articles spanning a decade (May 1999 to Jan 2010) from Indonesia. One of our goals is to enhance our understanding of counter-radical movements in critical locations in the Muslim world. We present information extraction techniques to recognize entities, and their beliefs and practices in text as a step towards identifying socially significant scales with explanatory power. Then, we proceed to cluster organizations based on these scales. We present experimental results, and discuss challenges in reasoning with the complex interactions of many simultaneous beliefs, practices and attitudes held by the leaders and followers of various organizations.