Protagonist Wins Contract in Support of the DARPA INCAS Program
August 23, 2021
San Francisco, CA – Protagonist is proud to announce that it has been awarded a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in support of DARPA’s Influence Campaign Awareness and Sensemaking (INCAS) program. Protagonist’s Detecting Influence Signatures in Conversations Online for Understanding, Research, Sensemaking, and Evaluation (DISCOURSE) project will develop a suite of machine learning / natural language processing (ML/NLP) tools to automatically detect indicators of geopolitical influence in multilingual online content. The goal is a set of complementary capabilities that can be used alone or collectively to detect influence across fragmentary, disparate, and multilingual online messages. DISCOURSE will leverage Protagonist’s broad experience using ML/NLP to detect narratives in complex and noisy media environments
Protagonist COO Bryan Pelley, said, “We’re honored to have the opportunity to work with DARPA to advance the state-of-the-art when it comes to detecting influence campaigns online and to continue our mission-focused work in support of our warfighters.” Protagonist Vice President of Analytics (and DISCOURSE Principal Investigator) Becky Owens, added, “Our team is excited about developing innovative ML/NLP techniques to solve this hard problem set.”
Protagonist is a women-owned, women-led small business and pioneer in narrative research, analysis, and strategy. We help our clients harness the power of narratives by illuminating the stories that matter to their mission, analyzing the influences and influencers that are driving those narratives, and developing strategies for navigating and shaping those narrative landscapes. Over the past decade, we have developed a line of state-of-the-art narrative products that focus on the deep, enduring stories that define a population’s identity, shape their perspectives, and describe their beliefs. Our Narrative Analytics® technology platform is relied on by dozens of the world’s leading corporations, government agencies, and nonprofits to identify, quantify, and track narratives in online conversations. We have team members in Washington, DC, San Francisco, Chicago, and many points in between.
To learn more about this announcement, please contact:
Bryan Pelley, COO
Protagonist
One Thomas Circle NW, Suite 700, Washington DC 20005
Office: (415) 967-5520
info@protagonist.io
© 2021 Protagonist Technology LLC
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