Narrative and threat awareness
Murmur
Early warning from publicly available social media, news and online sources: threats to life, planned disruption, emerging events and the narratives that lead to them.
- Public posts and articles a day
- 410 million
- Languages
- 71
- Sources
- Social media, news, forums, video, messaging channels open to the public
- First release
- September 2019
Watch what matters to your mission
Analysts set up watches for places, events, topics, organizations and accounts. Murmur reads more than 410 million public posts and articles a day in 71 languages, and shows an analyst the ones that matter, as they appear.
A watch can follow a city block, a stadium, a pipeline route, a visiting dignitary’s itinerary, a company’s executives, or a planned march. Murmur groups what it finds into stories, so a small team can follow a large event without reading every post.
Categories you define
Murmur scores every item it finds against a set of categories and alerts analysts when an item or a story crosses a threshold. Murmur ships with a standard set, and each mission partner can add categories of its own, under its own policies.1
| Category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Threat to life | Statements of intent to harm people, including self-harm |
| Threat to property and infrastructure | Intent to damage buildings, utilities, transport and networks |
| Planned disruption | Plans to block roads, occupy premises or disrupt events |
| Emerging incident | First reports of fires, shootings, crashes and other events |
| Narrative | Claims and themes spreading quickly about a place, event or organization |
| Mission partner categories | Defined by each mission partner |
Who is driving a story
Murmur shows which accounts start a story, which amplify it, and how they are connected, so an analyst can tell a handful of organizers from thousands of bystanders. With Kinship, accounts can be resolved to the people and organizations behind them where the mission partner holds lawful authority to do so, and sent into Concord.
For corporate security
Corporate security, executive protection and communications teams use Murmur to see threats to their people, facilities and events, and to follow narratives about their organizations as they form. Commercial customers receive a separate edition with no access to government data or to Kinship resolution of individuals.2
Public information only
- Murmur analyzes only publicly available information. It does not access private messages, private accounts or closed groups.
- Murmur may not be used to monitor individuals solely for the exercise of rights protected by the First Amendment, such as lawful protest, worship or association. Our Acceptable Use Policy has prohibited it since Murmur was introduced.
- Every watch records who created it and why, and every alert and action is logged.
Common questions
Does Murmur label people?
No. Murmur scores public content against categories and alerts analysts. What to do about any item is decided by people at the mission partner.
Can Murmur read private messages?
No. Murmur reads only content that is publicly available.
Who defines the categories?
Murmur ships with standard categories, and each mission partner may define its own under its own policies and law.
Can Murmur be used at protests?
Murmur may be used to protect public safety at public events, including demonstrations. It may not be used to monitor people solely because they exercise their First Amendment rights.
Works with Murmur
- Category definitions, thresholds and the actions taken on alerts are set by each mission partner. Tellwright does not review mission partner categories. ↩
- Commercial editions may enrich public accounts with publicly available information about the organizations they represent. Household and associate enrichment is not available to commercial customers who disable it. ↩