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Can Radian6 be used to prevent suicides and murders?

September 7, 2009 by Jonathan Nguyen  
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Jonathan Nguyen HoworthI’ve been thinking lately that we could potentially use social media monitoring tools to prevent suicides and mass murders. The idea struck me as I was working with some clients on a couple of issues / crisis management projects lately.

In the midst of the hurley burley of crisis mode, a news story caught my eye­. Killer George Sodini went berserk in a Pennsylvania gym and killed three, wounding nine before turning the gun on himself. The thing about it is, he blogged about doing it. That’s when the idea sparked.

So I did some digging

It’s not the first time, that social media was used by a killer or a suicide victim to declare their intentions. With a quick search, I found Paul Zolezzi, a model who declared he was going to kill himself on Facebook and did. More interestingly though, I found Hsu Yu-sheng.

Hsu Yu-sheng

Hsu is a gay and lesbian rights activist in Taiwan, who on August 6 wrote a farewell note on his blog in English. After seeing the note, readers of his blog, launched a full scale effort to save him. Friends and strangers alike, thousands of people banded together, to try to track him down and others posted kind comments to his blog.

Police arrived at Hsu’s place just in time and saved his life.

The idea

We use social media monitoring tools such as Radian6 to listen to conversations on the blogosphere and elsewhere to protect brands. It’s not a stretch to deploy these tools to protect people.

How it would work

1.       Radian6 set up to listen for a list of keywords

2.       Suspect posts are parsed through to a heuristic analysis engine to further determine the sentiment of the post. Radian6 is has a automatic Sentiment engine built in, but we need one that would be tuned to suicidal/homicidal sentiments

3.       Results that come up positive there are alerted to the on duty psychiatrist for an assessment and to alert the relevant authorities

There would be many issues that would have to be dealt with to make the system viable, feasible and workable and even then it would never be a certainty. What it would be is another tool in kitbag to tackle an extremely complex and difficult problem.

About Jonathan Nguyen

Jonathan is a motorcyclist who also happens to bore all his friends talking about social media... and motorbikes.

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  • http://twitter.com/davidalston David Alston

    Hey there Jonathan,

    That's a very cool idea. Maybe it could be paired up with the non-profit org like Kids Help Phone (not sure if they have something similar in Australia) or another organization where volunteers are already staffing phones to offer help to those in need. They could answer the “social phone” and could reach out to connect or work with the other help organizations as you mentioned.

    Again, great thinking on this Jonathan. I'd be interested in working with you on this if you found a non-profit partner(s) interested in exploring these possibilities.

    Cheers.
    @davidalston
    Radian6

  • http://www.katugasm2.co.uk nigellegg

    Great idea, but this will need funding – and from who? The system would “catch” incidents from anywhere on the English-speaking internet, and therefore could not be funded out of a single police or law enforcement budget. If you set to region, it goes by IP address – so anybody posting in the UK for example to a *.wordpress.com blog would only be picked up by a US search -and the FBI don't yet have jurisdiction here. This is a really nice idea, but it will need a not-for-profit to set up, run, and notify the relevant authorities. In other words, it will be lots of work.

  • http://www.katugasm2.co.uk nigellegg

    David – my reply (below or somewhere) is a bit negative but if there are enough people in enough places willing to work with it it might just fly – let me know if you need a UK link…

  • http://www.jonathannguyen.net/ Jonathan Nguyen

    There's definitely a Kids Helpline over here. It would be interesting to see if the an idea like this would be taken up by a not for profit. Are you saying that if we could pitch an idea like this Radian6 would be willing to support the endeavour?

  • http://www.jonathannguyen.net jnau

    Hi Nigel

    Absolutely. There are multiple issues even over and above the issues you have raised, but it's not impossible. As with all these things there's a point when the issues of implementation outweigh the issues of not implementing.

    It's worth putting the idea out there though because it might actually resonate with someone who is looking for a solution.

  • http://twitter.com/davidalston David Alston

    Hey there Jonathan,

    Lets look into to something if there is some interest from them. Feel free to ping me on email to talk deets on this as well.

    Cheers.
    @davidalston
    Radian6

  • http://digitalreputationblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/revue-de-blogs-semaine-502009/ Revue de blogs – Semaine 50/2009 « Digital Reputation Blog

    [...] Can Radian6 be used to prevent suicides and murders? : utiliser les outils de surveillance des médias sociaux pour prévenir les suicides et les intentions criminelles. [...]

  • http://christopherdelatorre.com/ Christopher

    Truly insightful, Jonathan! Great article, found it via LinkedIn — I will be sharing. Let's connect.

    twitter.com/scriptdaddictd
    christopherdelatorre.com
    facebook.com/christopherdelatorre

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