The world is constantly in flux. Coup attempts, changes in government, geopolitical upheavals, and natural disasters are the order of the day. Modern monitoring systems effectively capture freely accessible online news and generate an initial digital situational overview. However, as soon as the Internet is shut down or social media channels are blocked on the ground, web scrapers alone reach their limits. National broadcasters that rely on terrestrial broadcasts via antenna or satellite are the most reliable source of initial information during crises. In these scenarios, analysts must rely on local radio and TV signals.

A real-world example illustrates the problem: Following an internet blackout in a Sahelian country, digital channels went offline. In the wake of political upheaval, national broadcasters switched their transmissions from French—the former colonial language—to the local African languages Hausa and Kanuri. Without targeted language and frequency monitoring, valuable contextual information is lost.

Technical Workflow: From Satellite Signal to AI Transcription

To ensure seamless monitoring of local radio and television stations, a multi-tiered technical architecture is used:

1. Reception & Acquisition: Short-term leasing of satellite capacity and acquisition of (raw) video streams directly from the target region and neighboring countries.
2. Recording: Storing broadcasts using specialized broadcast loggers.
3. Automated AI translation: Transcription and translation from the source language (e.g., French, Hausa, Kanuri) into English. AI modules take grammar, spelling, and punctuation into account
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4. Data Preparation: Transfer of texts in hourly batches (junk) as full text to the central monitoring system Talkwalker via the RS-Link platform connector.

Figure 1: XENTAURIX Media and Broadcast Logger

Ex-post analyses using HTML containers

Since Talkwalker, as an analytics platform, primarily references web content, the platform connector wraps the transcripts in HTML containers. This enables in-depth ex-post analyses of the full text. In a future release, the corresponding video clips can also be made available in sync with the transcription.

Using Conversation Analysis in Talkwalker

Within Talkwalker, analysts use structured tools to conduct a precise assessment of the situation:

• Conversation Clusters: Detection of visual themes and linguistic patterns.

• Blue Silk™ AI: Quickly generate discourse summaries and sentiment analyses.

Target Audiences and Leading Technology Providers

Automated audio and video monitoring in over 50 languages opens up new possibilities for:

• Crisis Centers & Intelligence Agencies

• Press Offices & Digital Publishers

• Broadcasters & News Agencies

• Financial and Economic Analysts

Comparison of Relevant System Providers in the Market

• artec technologies AG (XENTAURIX): Use of the XENTAURIX Media and Broadcast Logger. The solution universally supports all common broadcast and webcasting standards and is characterized by high reliability.

• rola Security Solutions (rsObIn): Monitors internet broadcasts, among other things. Includes AI-powered object recognition (OCR) for subtitles, as well as recognition of people, weapons, brands, license plates, and symbols. One area of focus is the future detection of deepfakes in video and audio.

• eMedia Monitor (EMM): Extensive terrestrial broadcasting network and market leader in station coverage (Vienna). The integration of advanced AI modules is currently being scaled up.

Figure 2: Radiosphere RS-Linx/Talkwalker/RS-Link

Conclusion and Takeaways: Seamless Broadcast Monitoring for the Operations Center

By combining satellite technology, AI transcription, and platform connectors, traditional radio and TV can be seamlessly integrated into state-of-the-art monitoring systems such as Talkwalker. This automated approach will become an indispensable standard for comprehensive discourse and conversation analysis during crises.

Photos and graphics: artec technologies AG, Radiosphere, Hasan Almasi/Unsplash