TY - JOUR AU - Benjamin, Victor AU - Chung, Wingyan AU - Abbasi, Ahmed AU - Chuang, Joshua AU - Larson, Catherine A. AU - Chen, Hsinchun PY - 2014 DA - 2014/09/16 TI - Evaluating text visualization for authorship analysis JO - Security Informatics SP - 10 VL - 3 IS - 1 AB - Methods and tools to conduct authorship analysis of web contents is of growing interest to researchers and practitioners in various security-focused disciplines, including cybersecurity, counter-terrorism, and other fields in which authorship of text may at times be uncertain or obfuscated. Here we demonstrate an automated approach for authorship analysis of web contents. Analysis is conducted through the use of machine learning methodologies, an expansive stylometric feature set, and a series of visualizations intended to help facilitate authorship analysis at the author, message, and feature levels. To operationalize this, we utilize a testbed containing 506,554 forum messages in English and Arabic, source from 14,901 authors that participated in an online web forum. A prototype portal system providing authorship comparisons and visualizations was then designed and constructed in order to support feasibility analysis and real world value of the automated authorship analysis approach. A preliminary user evaluation was performed to assess the efficacy of visualizations, with evaluation results demonstrating task performance accuracy and efficiency was improved through use of the portal. SN - 2190-8532 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s13388-014-0010-8 DO - 10.1186/s13388-014-0010-8 ID - Benjamin2014 ER -