CONTENT ANALYSIS OF DIGITAL TEXT CONVERSATION TO IDENTIFY MALICIOUS INTENT: A CASE STUDY

(1)

IDENTIFY MALICIOUS INTENT: A CASE STUDY

Ms. Jasani Nirali K.a, Dr. S. L. Vayab

a

Research Scholar, Institute of R & D, Raksha Shakti University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

b

Director, Institute of R & D, Raksha Shakti University, Ahmedabad , Gujarat, India

ABSTRACT

The massive advancement in digital memos, electronic writings have developed into base stake for communication in today’s world. Digital communications have transformed the area of business, news along with prompt and direct engagement with friends and family. Majority of the population use some or other form of digital communication regularly in their everyday lives. Remarkably, various forms of electronic evidence (i.e., e-evidence) are increasingly being used in both civil and criminal litigation. Abusive activities like conversations including any quarrel, crucial information regarding any important deal, money laundering deals, gambling deals, kidnapping messages, suicidal or homicidal signalling messages or chats defaming anyone etc provide with crucial structures in emotional content indicating motivation in the thought process. In this paper an attempt has been made to study the recent case filed where the complainant’s daughter was harassed and threatened by accused on phone and whatsapp through messages which evaluates the emotions that is suggestive of mal -intention in the thoughts process motivating behind the crime committed.

(2)

Last few decades has been infused with the technology in our daily life conversations and a new era of language formation and usage has come in to existence. This increased use of digital texting applications, smart phones, tablets usage revolution, antisocial and delinquent behavior in persons, commission of abusive activities, potential evidence held on these devices, conversations including crucial information and less amount of work carried out in India are the parameters which supported this study.

The content analysis allows gathering convincing and credible evidence to support the finding. The work will contribute to infer the malicious intent of the person inEmotional content motivating the thought process inferred from thedigital text conversations.

The script in the messages comes directly from the typist in a unique personal individual way, irrespective of the persons control over the physical execution of the task. The digital text shows the trend of freedom and unhindered conversational society but it needs a watch to. Many times it submerges the ethical values and the social norms which has adverse effect on the society.

Intention represents a psychological state of wanting a certain effect or outcome of a willfully carried out act. It represents & serves as the motivation to act. Thus, Intentional act in its primary form is reflexive and involuntary and the subject gains control over it only in the later phase when he develops awareness of the associated need state afterreaching threshold levels for execution. In this phase, the intended act becomes an act requiring conscious and willful effort.

Thus, intention stands as circumstantial proof for the act that is thought of or that is performed. Intention meaning is based on purpose and desire. It can also be put forward as where the person purpose is not to cause the results but then he comprehends that the results are probable. It can be reasoned that if a person foresees a consequence, that is sufficient evidence that that consequence is wanted or desired [3].

All humans have unique patterns of behavior, much like the uniqueness of biometric data. Therefore, certain characteristics pertaining to language, composition, and writing, such particular syntactic and structural layout traits, patterns of vocabulary usage, unusual language usage and stylistic traits, is expected to remain relatively constant because of habit patterns.

The present study aims at exploring unfathomable roots of behavioural expressions that is expressed in a real case filed where the complainant’s daughter was harassed and threatened by accused on phone and whatsapp messages. Content analysis ofwhatsapp messages suggests themalicious intent reflected in emotions triggered as the motivating factor in the thought process behind the crime committed[1].

(3)

A real case data consisting of digital text conversations as the evidence is acquired with permission from the commissionerate of the city police signing the undertaking for maintaining the confidentiality of the unit level data and adequate precautions be taken for not disclosing the identity of the units directly or indirectly as the data given is purely for research purpose.

The case consists of a compliant made by the victim’s father where description of the case says that the victim was harassed and threatened by the accused on whatsapp chat and call. The girl was staying as paying guest in city and had come here for studying from village and suddenly one day a boy calls her and messages on whatsapp and harasses her. She complains this to her father and her father lodges complaint at the police station. The police has recovered the text message conversations from the girl’s phone. This text messages are analysed in this study for understanding the emotional contentreflecting mal-intention in the thought process motivating the dialogue.

The sample of the whatsapp chat received for the analysis from the investigation agency is the chat in two portions with a time lapse of 16 minutes between the two. The first part is the chat of 16 minutes (i.e. from 10:22 PM to 10:38 PM) and the second part is of 03 minutes (i.e. from 10:54 PM to 10:57 PM). Total 68 messages were presented before the investigators that were exchanged between the boy and the girl.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

1. Whether the emotional content help in identifying malicious intent from digital text conversations?

2. Whether identified malicious intent is reflected in the content of the thought process?

HYPOTHESIS:

To examine the digital text conversations and associated emotional content in the thought process, we define hypothesis as below:

H1: The emotional content help in identifying malicious intent from digital text conversations.

H2: Identified malicious intent is reflected in the content of the thought process

Digital Test conversation was analysed which reflected the following three possibilities:

1. Both the girl and the boy knew each other 2. The girl and the boy are strangers to one another

(4)

Primarily all the messages were classified in to two different categories to understand the sequence of messages reflecting the emotional content of the thought process for the purpose of analysis.Out of total 68 messages presented before the investigators that were exchanged between the boy and the girl, messages sent by boy were 37 in number and messages sent by the girl were 31 in number.

In the response with respect to the dialogue, the emotional response and the thought process were classified and some of the English conversion of the messages typically conversed in the local Gujarati language with the classification are represented and herein after the boy will be represented as “B” and the girl as “G” are as follows:

“Go away” which is the first message of the text sent by the G suggest the abrupt start of the conversation received and reflects the incoherence of themessages with the previous chat that has not been displayed which suggest the incompleteness of the data and lack of total content for the analysis and there might be some left over conversations that might have been deleted containing some important indicators of intention.

In the subsequent messages of G, “Do whatever you can do”, “it is my look out that my number is saved in your phone” is suggestive of possibility of bothof them are known to each other as B has got the number of G saved in his phone and G is accepting the fact that her number is saved with him before the first chat message received for analysis is her concern.

On the B’s reply asking her “to call after an hour, till than he will read her dairy” and She asking to “lift the call”, and getting the reply from B as “he don’t have time”. G starts becoming abusive using the words that “I am your servant?” and “don’t want your time, you Ass” and asking him to stop messaging before she becomes abusive for his mother and sister which are very obnoxious words in Gujarati language and tells B that it will be very much throbbing to him which shows the constant reaction of G to threaten B and get the details which B knows. B suddenly shows passivity to her reply giving her some hints in discontinuous pattern of words about the person who gave her number to him. Here B tries to get her in clutch in teasing manner.

G tries to show the potential by threatening the boy that “tell your name or I will give your number to my father”, this displays that G is in some fear that B surely knows dark side of her and thinks that she will be out by threatening the boy. As she is continuously “Reacting” to B and B reflects in a teasing manner, G feels more harassed. Using constantly abusive language is a sign of connecting to the person, which encourages the person to tease her more and more.

This type of persuasive conversation of giving hints in words and telling sorry that he is joking with her and she knows him already makes the girl more aggressive in her expression of thoughts in the further chat till some messages.

(5)

She denies of knowing that person and ask him “Is this a manner to message someone, what you wanted to do?” He replies with smiley that he wanted to “harass her”. In its reply G suddenly tries to be very forgiving and asks in convincing manner to B to give the details of the person as “if you have any work with me then tell or don’t harass by doing such messages, you are like brother so, otherwise I was irritated so much?... tell the truth who gave you my number?” This depicts that G wanted to get the details of the person from whom her number got exposed as she as in fear that someone and B are aware of some details.

On the above reply B gets aggressive and tells her that “I don’t want to keep any such relations of brotherhood” and tells her bye in anger but after a time lapse of 16 minutes again the boy messages the girl showing passivity that “ Why you are doing like this?” (means please don’t do this) and G again starts reacting to B’s messages asking him the details again and B gives her the name and other details, which G portrays as she knows that there is no such person and tries to double check the details, that if boy details out any other information. This shows the agitation in G and fear.

From the above analysis it can be suggested that whenever the girl became abusive the boy starts persuading which is suggestive of teasing attitude by giving her brief details and assuring her that he knows something about her. The G appears more and more angry and agitated and she starts showing the threat of giving his number to her father, and hopes that the threat of her father works. This is suggestive of her dependency on authority figure father than trust in herself to handle the situation as an adult. It gives an hint to her probable socio cultural & educational background she hails from indicating she must be belonging to a small town with limited exposure of understanding of big cities.

Against this constant and continuous reaction of girl to the boy’s messages, the response of the boy suggest that he is motivated to continue the persuasive dialogue in a teasing manner which is perceived by the G as a harassment. This is an indication suggestive of the possible malicious intent of the boy to harass the girl and the girl’s constant and continuous reaction to the messages is indicative of strong emotional response in her thought process is suggestive of feeling of harassment and keenness to get the knowledge about the person who has revealed her number and information.

CONCLUSION:

The above case analysis supports the mentioned research questions that the emotional content help in identifying malicious intent from digital text conversations and the identified malicious intent is reflected in the content of the thought process.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

(6)

the case to support the research and Raksha Shakti University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat to provide with support and good platform for research.

REFERENCES:

1. Bilal Hafiz Ahmed et. al. (2013). A Sociolinguistic Study of Varying Level of Formality of Computer Mediated Communication in Pakistan, International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 3 (13), 291-297

2. Orebaugh A. &Allnutt J. (2009). Classification of Instant Messaging Communications For Forensics Analysis, The International Journal Of Forensic Computer Science, 22-28.

http://www.Ijofcs.Org