OSINT One. Experts Zero.

Our traditional institutions, leaders, and experts have shown to be incapable of understanding and accounting for the multidimensionality and connectivity of systems and events. The rise of the far-right parties in Europe. The disillusionment of European Parliament elections as evidenced by voter turnout in 2009 and 2014 (despite spending more money than ever), Brexit, and now the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States of America. In short, there is little reason to trust experts without multiple data streams to contextualize and back up their hypotheses.

How could experts get it wrong? Frankly, it’s time to shift out of the conventional ways to make sense of events in the political, market, and business domains. The first variable is reimagining information from a cognitive linguistic standpoint. Probably the most neglected area in business and politics – at least within the mainstream. The basic idea? Words have meaning. Meaning generates beliefs. Beliefs create outcomes, which in turn can be quantified. The explosion of mass media, followed by identity-driven media, social media, and alternative media, is a problem, and we are at the mercy of media systems that frame our reality. If you doubt this, reference the charts below. Google Trends is deadly accurate in illustrating what is on people’s minds the most, bad or good, wins – at least when it comes to U.S. presidential elections. The saying goes bad press is good press is quantified here, as is George Lakoff’s thinking on framing and repetition (Google search trends can be used to easily see which frame is winning, BTW ).

google-search-trends-presidential-candidates-2004-to-present — Google search trends of Democrat and Republican presidential candidates going back from 2004 to 2016. The candidate with the highest search volume won in all political races.

Social media and news mentions of key 2016 presidential candidates. The query used was ( — Social media and news mentions of key 2016 presidential candidates per hour within the query used “Donald Trump” OR “Hillary Clinton” OR hashtags #ElectionDay OR #Election2016.

google-search-trends-nicolas-sarkozy-franc%cc%a7ois-fillon-alain-juppe — Google Trends wasn’t caught off guard by François Fillon’s win over Nicolas Sarkozy and Alain Juppé in the French Republican primaries. It was closer than the polls expected all along.

Within this system, there is little reason to challenge one’s beliefs, and almost nothing forces anyone to question their own. Institutions and old media systems used to be able to bottleneck this; they were the only ones with a soapbox, and information was reasonably slow enough. There is a need for unorthodox data, such as open-source intelligence (OSINT) and creativity, which traditional systems of measurement and strategy lack to outthink current information systems. To a fault, businesses, markets, and people strive for simple, linear, and binary solutions or answers. Unfortunately, complex systems, i.e., the world we live in, don’t dashboard into nice simple charts like the one below. The root causes of issues are ignored, untested, and contextualized, which creates only a superficial understanding of what affects business initiatives.

linear-dashboard — A nice linear BI chart is above. Unfortunately, the world is much more complex and connected – like the network graph below, which clusters together new media that covered Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

network-graph-of-news-media-about-donald-trump-hillary-clinton

I know this may feel like a reach in terms of how all that is mentioned is connected, so more on OSINT, data, framing, information, outcomes, and markets to come.

Cheers, Chandler

The Brexit

While investors were in shock, open source signals such as Google trends often pointed to “Leave” predominating, illustrating expert and market biases. Perhaps they should work on integrating these unconventional data streams better (sorry couldn’t help it). The UK’s decision to exit from the EU is part of a larger global phenomenon that could have been understood better with open source, not just market, data.

Leave Remain Google Trends — ***Google Search Trends on “Leave” or “Remain”***

The world is growing more complex. Information is moving faster. Humans have not evolved to retain or understand this mass output of (dis) information in any logical way. As a response, a retreat to simple explanations and self-censorship towards new ideas that might challenge one’s frame are ignored and become the norm. Populist decisions are made and embraced, oftentimes reactionary towards the establishment or elite. Multi-national corporations and elites will need to step outside of their bubble and take note of nationalist, albeit sometimes isolationist, such as Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, President Erdogan of Turkey, Marie Le Pen’s Front National of France, Boris Johnson – Former Mayor of London and Brexit backer (good chance he takes David Cameron’s place), Germany’s AFD and the 5-star movement in Italy gain in both popularity and power.

New media online coverage tagging of Leave V Remain — News media dynamics of “Leave” (Red) and “Remain.” Grey and black have no overlying preference. In addition to Google Trends, most of the media coverage focused on “Leave” over “Remain.” Those polling companies should look at framing effects to accurately conclude outcomes.

Red = People associated with Leave. Blue = people associated with Remain.

In addition to the more media coverage, more people were associated with the leave campaign, which is an advantage. During a political campaign, choices and policy lines are anything but logical; they tend to fall on emotional lines, so institutional communications must have a noticeable figurehead, especially in the media age. It says something when the top people who are associated with Remain are Barak Obama, Janet Yellen, and Christine Lagarde. Note that David Cameron is more central with leave. Nonetheless, the pleas by political outsiders and institutions such as the IMF and World Bank for the UK to remain in the EU potentially caused damage to the “Remain” campaign. UK voters did not want to hear from foreign political elites. This is illustrated by the connection and proximity of the “Obama Red Cluster” to the French right-wing Forest Green cluster (and the results) below. The “Brexit” could lend credence to the possibility of EU exit contagion. There are very real forces in France (led by the Front National) and Italy (led by the 5 Star Movement (who just won big in elections) that are driving hard for succession from the EU and or, potentially, the Eurozone.

This network show the Brexit domain the day prior to the Leave result. — This network shows the Brexit domain the day prior to the Leave result.

Ramifications:

Banks (especially European ones) are fleeing to the gold market, seeking shelter from volatility. While this is to be expected, dividend-based stocks and oil would also be attractive to those seeking stability.
Thursday’s referendum sent global markets into turmoil. The pound plunged by a record, and the euro slid by the most since it was introduced in 1999. Historically, the British Pound reached an all-time high of 2.86 in December of 1957 and a record low of 1.05 in February of 1985.
Don’t count on US interest rate hikes. Yellen has expressed concern about global volatility on multiple occasions. The Brexit just added to that. The Bank of England could follow the US Fed and drop interest rates on the GBP to account for market uncertainty.
If aggressive, European uncertainty could allow US companies to gain on European competitors. Due to the somber mood within Europe, companies could be more conservative with investment, leaving them vulnerable.
Alternatively, Brexit may trigger more aggressive U.S. or global expansion by European Companies while the ramifications of Brexit are further understood.
The political takeaway is that the Remain campaign was relatively sterile, with no figurehead or clear policy issues directly related to the EU. This was reflected by the diversity in associated search terms related to the “Leave” campaign. In addition, Angela Merkel, not an EU leader such as European Commission President Jean-Claude Junker, was once again seen as the de facto voice of Europe.

The German election and EU political communications

For this post, I decided to remain old school and mainly rely on search data. It’s pretty basic, but typically offers a great view of what people are interested in. Google’s market share is around 90% in Europe and it’s the most visited site in the world. In my opinion, Google Trends is the largest focus group in the world.

First I looked at the overall interest in Germany between Angela Merkel and Peer Steinbrück, as well as their political affiliations – the CDU and PSD. Initially, I was curious as to how party identity interest compared to interest in the politician. To anchor this chart I did the same with US presidential campaign (the chart below). I have a hunch, and the data seems to be telling me thus far, that the more media-oriented politics becomes (along with everything else in the world), the more important celebrity, authenticity, and individuality becomes. Take a look at this recent brand analysis done by Forbes. Chris Christie wins, having the highest approval rating of over 3,500 “brands” according to BAV (awesome company) at 78%. For those that don’t know, Christie is probably the most straight forward tell-it-like-it-is politician in the country.

So what can we learn from the Google search interest shown below?

Google search data of the 2013 German elections

Obama, McCain, Romney, Democrat and Republican search interest.

Politics is still about sheer volume and name recognition. For those that think being novel and unique achieves victory over blasting away nonstop in a strategically framed and coordinated way, think again. People tune out if they aren’t interested. Irrelevance is almost always worse than bad PR or sentiment (excluding a case like Anthony Weiner). You simply don’t win if you don’t interest people. If people aren’t talking about you, you’re not interesting. Merkel had more search interest than Steinbrück and over the course of the year probably got 10,000 times more airtime, both good and bad, due to her large role in the euro crisis. In short, repetition is king.

Framing and consistent language strategy is vital. Volume can be shown to equate with recognition of a person, but this can easily enough be analogized to a policy or issue. Give me a choice between a clever social media strategy or consistent language strategy, meaning all the key issues are repeated by the party and coordinated as much as possible, and I’ll take the language strategy any day. It’s amazing how just being consistent in political communications is overlooked by companies and political leaders in Europe. Social media tends to be a framing conduit, not the reason people mobilize or have opinions.

The world is growing ever more connected. Look at how global the reporting of the German election was. Obviously, its importance was higher due to Germany’s rising influence, but none the less the amount of sources from all over the world is impressive. A note for the upcoming EU elections: don’t forget to target the USA and other regions to influence specific regions in Europe. A German constituent might read about a policy from the Financial Times, a Frenchman the Wall Street Journal or an American based in Brussels, who knows Europeans who can vote, Bloomberg.

I decided to throw in Twitter market share of the candidates from August 21st to September 21st, the day prior to elections. I found it interesting to see how closely Belgium and the United State reflect Germany, probably because these countries are looking at the elections from more of a spectator view. Meanwhile, southern Europe, which had a vested interest in the election, was pretty much aligned. France, Spain, and Italy seem to report a bit more, and in a similar way, on Merkel – probably due to sharing the same media sources. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to look into this pattern too much at the moment, but it’s something I’ll continue to think about in the future.

Market-share of Twitter for Germany Election candidates: USA,DE,BE,PT,FR,ES,IT

Breakdown of TTIP and TAFTA

TTIP/TAFTA is a true game changer for both the EU and US in terms of economic value, especially in a time of crisis for the EU. To find out exactly what content people consumed and analyze policy trends, we mined the web (big data). At the moment TTIP/TAFTA is not being met without issues – as we all know in Brussels – #NSAGate, data privacy and IP are slowing down negotiations (we’re looking at you France), and this is generally what the data had to say as well.

Over view: 5,505 mentions of TTIP/TAFTA in the last 100 days – too large of number for business and institutions to ignore. In short you need to join the conversation if you have something to say about it ASAP (indecision is a decision).

Overview of the last 100 days amplitude.

The biggest uptick – a total of 300 mentions – came when Obama spoke at the G-8 summit in Ireland on June 17th when trade talks began. The key theme at this time was the potential boost in the economy. The official press release is here.

“The London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research estimates a pact – to be known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – could boost the EU economy by 119 billion euros (101.2 billion pounds) a year, and the U.S. economy by 95 billion euros.However, a report commissioned by Germany’s non-profit Bertelsmann Foundation and published on Monday, said the United States may benefit more than Europe. A deal could increase GDP per capita in the United States by 13 percent over the long term but by only 5 percent on average for the European Union, the study found.”

Given that there is conflicting information we wanted to see whose idea and data wins out – the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) or Bertelsmann Foundation (BF)? To do this we looked to see which study was referenced most. The chart below shows the mentions of each organization within the TTIP/TAFTA conversation over the last 100 days. The Center for Economic Policy Research is in orange and the Bertelsmann Foundation is in green.

In total both studies were cited almost the same amount:

Centre for Economic Policy Research: 80 Mentions
Bertelsmann Foundation: 83 mentions
Both organizations were mentioned together 53 Times.

More recently though the trend seems to show that the Economic Policy Research is being cited most in the last 30 days, including a large uptick on July 8th. This is mainly due to the market share of the sources being located more in the US and the US wanting to get a deal done faster than the more hesitant Europeans. Keep in mind the CEP claims larger benefits of TAFTA/TTIP than the BF study.

Locations of the CEPR and the BF last 100 days — Locations of the Center for Economic Policy Research and the Bertelsmann Foundation. Very diverse and more equal location market share.

Locations of the Center for Economic Policy Research and the Bertelsmann Foundation last 30 — Locations of the Center for Economic Policy Research and the Bertelsmann Foundation in the last 30 days: Notice the location marketshare is less diverse and dominated by the USA.

Where are the mentions?

The US had 2,743 mentions (49% overall)
All of Europe combined total was 1,986 (36% overall)

Of the topics ACTA is still being talked about with, IP and Data Protection top the list. This is not surprising given France’s reluctance to be agreeable because of the former and #prism, so below are those themes plotted.

Breakdown and trend graph of Topics surrounding TTIP TAFTA

The top stories on Twitter are in the table below. It’s not surprising that the White House is number one, but where are the EU institutions and media on this?

Top Stories	Tweets	Retweets	All Tweets	Impressions
White House	37	15	52	197738
Huff Post	26	0	26	54419
Forbes	23	0	23	1950786
JD Supra	15	2	17	42304
Wilson Center	12	7	19	72424
Facebook	12	0	12	910
Italia Futura	8	0	8	16640
BFNA	7	0	7	40246
Citizen.org	7	13	20	69356
Slate	7	0	7	13927

Everybody knows the battle for hearts and minds of people starts with a good acronym so I broke down the market share between TTIP (165) and TAFTA (2197):

I may add more in the coming days but those are a few simple bits of info for now. Nonetheless if you want to join the conversation on Twitter the top hashtags are below.

Top Hashtags for the TTIP and TAFTA debate

Barroso and Kerry Analysis

I decided to break down the events of John Kerry visit to Jose Barroso. The reactions are not drastic as I would have thought considering GMO’s and IP are two issues that people care about on both continents, and the Free Trade Agreement is making some actual headway. We will have more on this in the future, but here are small bits of data for starters

We see that the reporting on the John Kerry and Baroso event is reported on in Brussels 33 times – much more than any other area except for the entire US. Below we see events with organizations and people that both of them together are tied to.

Cross referencing what each leader said within the context above is where it gets interesting. Questions to ask: Who were their targets? Did they attain any impact?

When I first arrived to Brussels I was always amazed at how disconnected D.C was from Brussels with that I decided to look at who was following who. We see that only 1.1% follow both. In short they are disconnected networks. For Comparison sake I also did Obama V Barroso but since Obama has over 30 million follower, the tools I was using at the moment couldn’t process such large amounts of data.

Making “Corporate Culture” without the parentheses.

Much of this post was taken from a comment I wrote on LinkedIn in which I talked about vision and corporate culture (http://goo.gl/UIwUv). While a lot has been said of “corporate culture”, most of the time this is under the guise of CSR reforms and other similar bullshit jargon. Being a data man who relies on sound principles, I fully agree that an internal focus from leadership is essential. For change that “takes” there needs to be an internal process and protocol set that reinforces the change in addition to clear incentives and goals. In other words, make it so you can’t get out of it. It’s also important to remember that setting out and visualizing a corporate culture is often times different than building a sustainable and profitable culture that makes bleeding edge solutions and products that people and companies want to buy.

What I find painfully obvious, and a huge risk to building a sustainable corporate culture that breeds future relevance, is that lack of perspective and group thinking tend to build off one another. These are the banes of any culture seeking to be relevant and innovative in the highly competitive, interconnected, but often times different enough world.

Think about this: The majority of leaders and directors come from the same schools, have the same frame of mind and generally have had an upward linear career path that was safe. They went to the best schools, got good grades and were very smart. While intelligence and capability are no doubt quality prerequisites and parts of the solution, companies will inherently lack “grit” and suffer opportunity loss for the intellectual capital gained from it (Good article on grit http://goo.gl/W8Dxj) . Ultimately, the perspective that is essential for good decision making is affected (McKinsey; Kahneman and Klein article on this http://goo.gl/0bFcC). I find grit and perspective to be the main bottle necks in building a company culture that embraces disruption and leverages it fast, the holy grail of most of this research. So with that I challenge leaders to step up and get real with developing “corporate culture” legitimately (diverse/non group think environment) so it isn’t in parentheses as it often is.

Bring in fuck-ups so you don’t fuck up. People you might not be comfortable with and you don’t get right away. They might not have gone to the right schools, and might be a bit crazy, but have succeeded in unique ways that make you question your job, skills and thinking. You might find you are not relevant. This is obviously scary to people, but it’s necessary to motivate them into learning new skills, in addition to creating a “check down” in the corporate process that maintains innovation and relevance.

Thoughts – SWOT away.. CT

Thoughts on the election

Obama gets a lot of blame for the economy – which is the main argument/premise. None the less. Bush was in office when the stock market crashed and the GOP controlled both the senate and house the majority of the time leading up to the crash. It wasn’t just the US that went through crisis – every nation did no matter what type of government they ran – communist, socialist, free market (many eastern EU states).

Both parties voted for the bail outs. And fortunately we are improving.

My thinking is I’m not convinced a government or anyone for that matter really has that much control over any of it.. Other wise why did it happen in the first place?

Obama is not socialist. Go to Germany, Greece, Denmark or the Richest country on earth – Norway, if you want to see what that really is..It can be a good and bad thing. I run a US company that deals a lot in Europe and have done a decent amount of business. I must state that I do not feel the “crushing burden of socialism” as I’ve heard from those in the USA – and who probably have less complex legal/tax issues that are inherently involved with doing international business. If you want to see what real problems are, come to Belgium and try and start a company dealing with their BS admin procedures ( something I get to avoid because I have a US company).

Why every Romney supporter feels Obama is the worst person in the world:

In the last four years communications have increased ten fold and created a perception of us and them. This in turn physically effects our brains frame – which is directly how you view the world and political positions. For example you think you are 100% right and the issue is 100% clear, but a democrat feels just as correct about believing the exact opposite.

While you feel divided, different and apart from a liberal or conservative, the fact is you agree on 95% of things – you can both love dogs, like sports, think people should not kill or steal from each other… Now a Political strategist job is to make you think the 5% of things you don’t agree on are the biggest fucking problems in the world.

In actuality we have never been more aligned politically, while feeling further apart. This polarization is both good and bad. And a heavily debated topic among political scientist. For one it get’s people to understand complicated issues (good). Two it brings people to the polls (good). The big “what if”, is grid lock and the tipping point between facts and perceptions. At some point policy does have consequence – both good and bad, and some are better than others.

Romney or Obama. Not much would have changed. But as I say, who wins deserves it. In this case the Obama campaign was smarter and better than Romney’s. And that’s exactly who I want to lead the country.

Any how historically the next election should go to a Republican.

– CT

War Themes: News Output and Search Interest

Recently, I was doing a project to see if there was a correlation of war themed News and the Search interest. I found that there was indeed. .86 for Iraq and a .46 correlation for the strategically framed “War on Terror” language. I guess Chomsky and Lakoff are/were right. These findings are also in line with a study in 2010 by Daniela V. Dimitrova and Jesper Strömbäck. Their research concluded that U.S. Elite newspapers had higher patterns of military conflict framing, and used more official government and military sources. In contrast, Elite Swedish newspapers displayed more “responsibility and anti-war protest framing”, and were more critical of the war.

A Bit About Framing

Frames: The use of mental filters to make sense of incoming messages. All views are Framed and are constructed through schemas that influenced how we interpret the message. The goal of a communication professional is to create rhetoric that consciously or unconsciously acts to construct a point of view, and make language more inclusive to constituents.

FRAMES OPERATE IN FOUR KEY WAYS:

Identify Problems
Diagnose Causes
Make Moral Judgements
Suggest Solutions

EXAMPLES:

You have a 75% chance of living
You have a 25% chance of dying
She is a cold person
She is a warm person
Estate Tax
Death Tax

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