The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported about software developed by Second Century Initiative faculty member Anthony Lemieux and other colleagues that can analyze the music embedded in Islamic State/Da’esh video soundtracks to help flag and identify terrorist content online.
The automatic content recognition tool, named Marvin, allowed the researchers to single out Da’esh-produced Islamic songs (or anashid) and Koranic recitation appearing in Da’esh video. If a video has music embedded in it that is a product of the Islamic State’s music production wing of their media outfit, then it would really be something that should be screened further and most likely taken offline.
Lemieux worked with Jonathan Pieslak, a professor of music at City College of New York and Brian Pieslak, a partner of Web and mobile design firm Sedulen, to develop Marvin, which is similar to the popular music app Shazam.
Anthony Lemieux
Lemieux is director of Georgia State’s Global Studies Institute, and a professor of global studies and communication. He is also a member of the university’s Transcultural Conflict and Violence Initiative. He came to Georgia State under the second round of 2CI, the predecessor program of the Next Generation Program.
The AJC article, part of “The Jolt” political roundup, is available at https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/the-jolt-georgia-state-researcher-invents-app-detect-islamic-state-videos/TV0d0jvHABLHdkNpcqncKN/. A full article describing Marvin and the work by Lemieux’s team is available on the Georgia State University News Hub at https://news.gsu.edu/2019/01/15/georgia-state-researcher-helps-create-software-to-screen-for-terrorist-propaganda-videos/.