The Lantern
In a sort of elaboration of Zachary’s Karate Club, networks are constructed and analyzed by Paul Privateer’s software tool in an effort to undermine violence in schools: https://www.elastic.co/blog/behavior-correlation-using-elasticsearch-cause-award-honoree-noschoolviolence
This tool is called The Lantern, a tool to help analyze school networks for observable patterns. These patterns involve data about grades, school records, and sudden social withdrawal in an effort to identify students who are high-risk for things like cyberbullying, sexual harassment, and drug use, among many other abnormal happenings which could drag down a student. School networks, like that which was shown in class of Zachary’s Karate Club, are entered into the database and examined for noteworthy anomalies. Ideally, the split in the Karate Club network would be predicted beforehand, and used to alert teachers of potential conflict.
Privateer works in the fields of informatics and narrative theory; he uses data to infer complex ideas from patterns, as well as assumptions made easily by observing large amounts of data. He worked as a graduate-level professor, and witnessed what the article refers to as “student tragedies” for some years before developing The Lantern in hopes of predetermining some of the events which typically lead to tragedy. When a student is able to be personally monitored, red flags begin appearing typically before drastic action takes place. Grades begin falling, absences rack up, and eventually the student begins to withdrawal from measurable spaces like school clubs, leisure events, and social media. The idea behind Lantern is analyzing these patterns, and using the data to make a claim that a student in particular would benefit from extra help, or even just a personal check-in by trusted faculty.