After two months of protest, it appears the pan-Arab democracy movement may be slowing. It was able to topple two regimes (Tunisia and Egypt) rather quickly but has run into substantial opposition in other countries. The prime example is Libya, where pro-democracy rebels have reached a standstill (at best) with Colonel Gaddafi. The embattled leader was able to regroup in Tripoli and has been making recent military gains. While many news analysts made the assumption that smaller Arab governments would soon be toppled across the Middle East this does not appear to be the case.

Open source intelligence tools can help us understand the receding protest activity in smaller Arab countries like Algeria and Morocco that aren’t experiencing the support of an international media spotlight. Let’s take a look at the trends of recent online momentum related to these countries.

In Algeria, the protests were substantial enough that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika lifted an emergency law on February 22nd that had been in place since 1992. In the timeline below, we see a surge of activity before February 22nd, but afterwards, very little reported protest activity.

Algerian Protest Momentum Declines After Feb 22nd

What about in Morocco? The protest momentum decline is visible in Morocco, but the protests there have not disappeared. On March 10th, King Mohammad VI offered reforms to quell some of the protests. Morocco has remained in the news, but the momentum decline is still more significant than in Saudi Arabia.

Protest momentum is declining in Morocco, but not as fast as Algeria

The general trend seems to be that protest momentum in smaller Arab countries is on the decline. Compare the protest momentum in Saudi Arabia to the above graphs of Algeria and Morocco.

Protest momentum is on the increase in Saudi Arabia

We see that protest momentum in Saudi Arabia is on the increase, while  Algeria and Morocco are on the decline. What may explain this trend?

It is possible that smaller movements are receiving minimal press coverage compared to the larger countries like Saudi Arabia and Libya, which may be drowning out other  pro-democracy voices. Lack of media coverage in some countries could play to the advantage of those leaders currently in power as the media gives a global voice to the local people and effectively increases political pressure. Facebook may have been the catalyst in Egypt, but without Al Jazeera broadcasting the unrest in Tahrir Square 24/7 it is unlikely Mubarek would have stepped down.

As the protesters in Tunisia found, the media also has a fairly singular focus. It rarely maintains a high level of coverage over extended periods of time. Tunisia was the nation that triggered the unrest, but once the situation in Libya emerged the media shifted.  The protests in Tunisia are now rarely mentioned independent of other events in the region.

Protest Momentum in Tunisia. A few ripples are seen, but mostly only in regional summaries

In the graph above, we see that the momentum of the Tunisian protests has declined like in Algeria and Morocco. Tunisia is still mentioned in the news, but usually only in the context of Libya.

Summary

After the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt were toppled, there was an assumption that Arab governments across the Middle East would soon fall. Pro-democracy protesters across the Middle East have discovered that it is very difficult to dismantle established governments. Even in Egypt, members of the old Mubarak regime remain.

As seen in Algeria and Morocco, the media can have a fairly singular focus. The protesters need the help of the media, but once the media leaves that advantage can disintegrate rapidly. Unrest in some these smaller Arab countries has declined as reporters are flocking to other areas.

At Recorded Future, we compute a momentum value for each entity and event in our database. The momentum value indicates how interesting a certain event or entity is at a particular time, and is continously updated. In computing the momentum value, we take into account the volume of news around an entity or event, as well as what sources it is mentioned in, what other events and entities it is mentioned together with, and several other factors.

Every time you type an entity name in the What field of our web user interface, you get a sparkline indicating the last 30 day’s momentum of that entity,
e.g. the following for Thailand as of April 28 2010:

The momentum measure is used to present the most relevant query results in our web user interface, but it can also be analyzed using statistical methods to predict possible future changes in momentum, which in turn can be valuable e.g. for trading decisions. Correlation between the momentum curves of different entities can also be an indication of interesting relationships between those entities. Here is an example of a a timeline view of news about man-made disasters in Thailand, with a momentum curve included:

We think the momentum measure is a key indicator, useful in many analysis tasks, and therefore it is encouraging to see that similar ideas and visualizations are popping up in other places. Here’s a good one, from the very nice website HistoryShots, showing the births, deaths and power positions of political parties in the US:

The big difference between an artistically rendered momentum curve like this and ours is of course that ours are updated continuously as the world evolves.

Do you have other good examples of momentum-like measures and visualizations? Let us know!