Military Situation Awareness: Facilitating Critical Event Detection in Chat

Chat has become a primary means of communication for military command and control decision makers. One of the most important aspects of military chat use is the ability to detect critical events quickly and accurately, a task often complicated by the large number of chat messages received during actual operations. The primary goal of this research was to identify factors that enable chat watchstanders to more rapidly identify the critical information embedded in chat messages. These factors, which include message highlighting and chatroom layout, have the potential to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of information processing in fast-paced, information-rich operational environments. In this study, message highlighting techniques enabled users to detect 92% of highlighted events, in comparison to 83% of events that were not highlighted. These findings indicate that highlighting chat messages confers significant performance advantages, especially in conjunction with associated factors, such as chatroom layout.