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Example: Issue Tracking The Target Data Breach Dec. 2013 Feb. 2014

Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

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Page 1: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

Example: Issue Tracking

The Target Data Breach

Dec. 2013 – Feb. 2014

Page 2: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

The Example

An illustration of how an issue is

tracked by evolve24 across media

channels, influencers and

geography

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Page 3: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

Research Methodology

• This is a sample article set to demonstrate evolve24’s capabilities.

Typical data sets tend to be much larger.

• The dataset examined consists of English-language web, blog,

Facebook, and forum content for the top 50 retailers in the U.S. For

this example, Twitter was sampled at 1%.

• The Target breach conversation was isolated using the date range of

December 18, 2013, to February 28, 2014. Keywords included

credit, debit, card, data, register, store, millions, etc. paired with

terms such as breach, hack, stole, attack, theft. All variations

(plurals, tenses, etc.) were also included. This sample data set

included 87,000 unique articles.

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Page 4: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

Key Findings & Recommendations

• The story of the Target data breach spread quickly. Within a few minutes of the blog post, Krebs’ security-oriented followers were discussing it on Twitter.

• Online forums and news sites picked up the story quickly. By the time of Target’s announcement several mainstream media sources had already picked up the news.

• The data spread quickly throughout the U.S. (with particular coverage in California) and the world.

• At first, most discussions were strictly about the breach. As time passed, topics shifted to the number of cards affected and the possibility of personal information being shared on the black market. A few days later, the news that pins might have been compromised also broke.

• Overall, the concern that resonated most with consumers was personal information had been compromised and was now online and available for criminals to use rather than the breach itself.

• The steps Target and the banks took to reissue cards mitigated much of the concern around the issue, but, as of Fall 2014, Target’s reputation had yet to fully recover.

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Page 5: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

The Announcement: Krebs on Security

According to examined data, Brian

Krebs first broke the news of the

suspected Target data breach, and

immediately tweeted his story. From

there security minded followers started

to retweet.

Both of Krebs’ initial posts

mentioned “Black Friday,” which

functioned to heighten concern for

consumers. From the outset, the

scale of consumers affected was in

the “millions.”

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Page 6: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

The Target data breach story

originated on the Krebs on

Security blog.

Brian Krebs immediately

tweeted about his discovery.

Within the first few hours,

Twitter users and online news

picked up the story. The story

proliferated through Twitter

the first hours post-

announcement.

Krebs blog

& Tweet

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The First 8 Hours

How did the story evolve?

Page 7: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

Less that 24 hours after

Krebs, USA Today (early

edition) contacted Target,

Visa and the Secret

Service to confirm the

story.

At 11:00 a.m. Target gives

a press conference and

the story explodes on

Twitter and on the web.

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24 Hours Later

How did the crisis evolve over time?

Page 8: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

The First 24 Hours

How did the crisis evolve through media channels?

Krebs

post at

1:30 PM

12/18

Spread from

social to

traditional

Viral growth

begins with

Target press

conference

Less than 24 hours after Brian Krebs’ blog post, news of the breach had spread through

Twitter and social media channels. Traditional media picks up at around the 6-8 hour mark.

Coverage explodes in conjunction with Target’s press conference at 11 a.m. the next day.

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Page 9: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

February 2014

How did the crisis evolve through media channels?

Coverage rapidly accelerated from 12/19-12/25 with information sharing in both social and

traditional media. Volume increases at a slower rate from 12/25-1/8 during the holiday week

and spikes on Jan. 9 as news of more cards affected surfaces.

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Page 10: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

How did the story spread nationally?

The story originated

from Krebs, based

in Virginia. Within a

few hours the story

spread nationally.

Enter slide show

mode to see the

data spread.

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Page 11: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

How did the story spread internationally?

The story originated

from the United

States. Within an

hour, it spread to

Canada and the

UK. Within 3 hours,

to India and then

throughout Europe.

Enter slide show

mode to see how

the story spread

around the world

over the first 72

hours.

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Page 12: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

How did topics trend over time?

Initial

conversations

focused on the

facts: credit

cards at risk,

breach affects

40MM

News of other

affected retailers

spreads

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Page 13: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

Which topics are consumers more

emotionally invested in?

• Of all sub-topics identified within

coverage of the breach, having

‘personal information compromised

online’ is the most emotional topic. In

other words, the topic most likely to

change consumers’ behavior towards

Target.

• Low emotion/high volume topics like

‘credit cards sold on the black market’

are talked about frequently, but are

less of a concern.

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Page 14: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

Who is connected to the conversation?

• Target’s network during the breach is a good example of what a viral network looks like. There is an absence of identifiable clusters talking to one another, meaning no one stakeholder or group is pushing a clear agenda.

• To put this into context, the image on the right is an example of a network with identifiable and connected clusters. This is an example of what a concerted effortlooks like. Had we seen this, we would have suspected a few individuals were driving the story.

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Page 15: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

Top Publications

Financial and personal

finance publications led most

of the coverage of the breach

although it did receive

coverage in security blogs

and trade discussions as

well.

Unsurprisingly, most of the

news was negative, though

specific positive coverage

talked to Target’s immediate

announcement of the news

and the steps the company

and various banks took to

mitigate the impact.

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Page 16: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

What impact did the breach have on Target?

The data breach eroded consumer opinion about Target and the company was not fully able to recover

over the time period shown. Announcement days saw the greatest loss in consumer opinion.

*evolve24’s Consumer Opinion score calculates and weights the intensity of brand sentiment, the credibility of the source,

and the placement / relevancy of the brand within a given article.

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Page 17: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

EVOLVE24 METRICS

Appendix

Page 18: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

e24 Online Reputation & Emotion

Online Reputation

evolve24 uses advanced text analytics and patent-pending algorithms to convert social

conversation into a repeatable metric to quantify consumer perception in the online/social

space. Each document (blog, comment, article) receives a reputation score, which is

comprised of the sentiment of the brand, the relevancy of the document towards the

brand, and the credibility of the source.

The reputation score provides a metric for companies to compare its brand performance

over time, and to benchmark against competitors.

Emotion

evolve24’s Emotion Score™ is a weighted measure that calculates the emotional intensity of

a discussion. This measure is based on academic principles of risk communication and

behavioral psychology. The measure offers a scientific and consistent measure for

determining how persuasive a message is on an audience about a given issue or entity. This

provides an indicator of how an audience will react to a given situation. For example, a high

Emotion Score™ indicates that an audience is more likely to react to a given issue becuse

they are emotionally invested.

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Page 19: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

• PreCISE™ is a multi-step algorithm designed to start with millions of social and traditional media

observations and arrive at the highest-priority insights in a repeatable, automated fashion.

• Topic Modeling: PreCISE™ applies a state-of-the-art text analytics technology called Topic

Modeling (TM) to discover the topical structures of social media documents and classifies those

documents into different topical categories. TM learns the topical categories from a set of

documents directly; no knowledge about the topical categories is required in advance and in TM,

unlike in other methods, a document can be assigned to multiple topical categories.

• Predictive Issue Ranking: Ranking is performed by combining several per-issue summary

metrics into a single quantitative score for each issue. These per-issue quantitative scores may

then be sorted numerically to determine the overall order of significance of the issues. These

summary metrics, calculated for each issue, include:

• Volume (Core Messages)

• Sentiment (Core Messages)

• Influencer Network Strength

• Speed (Velocity)

• Emotional Intensity

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PreCISE™ - A Predictive Analytic

Page 20: Issue Tracking: How News 'Moves' Through the Media

PreCISE™ Component Overview

The PreCISE™ method combines weighted measures to determine which issues are most likely to

affect your industry and brand. The method is comprised of the following:

Prediction: Better forecasting through combined information

– Predictive Issue Ranking

Core Messages: A measure of messages and sentiment

– Volume: Number of documents for an issue

– Sentiment: Average sentiment score for a given document or stakeholder

Influence: A measure of the entities shaping the outcomes

– Influencer Network Strength: Issues with sporadically-mentioned or weakly-associated

entities are most likely not the imminent targets of focused action in the real world.

Speed: A measure of how quickly the issue is advancing

– Using various weights based on overall article count per day coupled with the speed at which

positivity, neutrality, or negativity is increasing/decreasing.

Emotion: A measure of the potential for the issue to change behavior

– Emotion scores also provide an indication of how likely it is that an audience will react to a

given situation. Higher emotion scores indicate an audience is more likely to react to a given

issue, as behavioral research proves they are more emotionally invested.

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