Researchers at Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Lab in Cherry Hill, NJ have begun tracking and analyzing tweets in disaster events to find how Twitter and other social networks can be of use during political unrest and conflict.

The research team, led by engineer and information specialist Brian Dennis, aims to show the federal government that social media research is worth greater investment. Since August 2009 the team has been tracking tweets on Twitter, as well as images on YouTube and Flickr.

Social media systems may also help military, aide, and government officials coordinate said Dennis. Events and comments that would otherwise be overlooked can be easily picked up on via social media tools, which are more capable of catching significant user content.

Dennis explained that compared to more traditional mediums of communication, social networks promote users to chat more freely and openly, leading to increased exposure of political corruption and strife. Issues people had been afraid to discuss openly are now freely tweeted. The Lockheed Martin researchers want to prove "the content on these [social media] sites is worth paying attention to" and determine "how to separate relevant, useful stuff from the blabbers," said Dennis.

Anyone with a cell phone or Internet access has the ability to tweet breaking news and his or her location and opinion. In disaster relief work, twitter is already used to track where help is needed most. Still, the research and use of social media in disaster events, such as political controversy or a natural disaster, has the capacity to be enormously expanded.

Dennis also plans to use demographic and behavioral data from the study to create a computer simulation of social-media user reactions to disasters.

In January when a 7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti, only a few months after the study began, the research team searched Twitter to see how much information they could gather. Researchers initially found 50 significant users tweeting about the quake. Then, by searching the users' followers and their followers' followers, the team compiled 29,000 tweets from more than 18,000 users within two hours.

Dennis called Haiti a "test drive." His team is now focused on hurricane season, which runs from June through November in the Atlantic, hoping for an opportunity to collect and analyze data from many similar events. The analysis over a period of time will help the team determine how reactions to disaster events may shift.