The role of social media in the intelligence cycle

Forrester, B.; den Hollander, K.

doi:10.1117/12.2242530

The role of social media in the intelligence cycle

Title

The role of social media in the intelligence cycle

Author

Forrester, B.
den Hollander, K.

Contributor

Broome, B.D. (editor)
Hanratty, T.P. (editor)
Llinas, J. (editor)
Hall, D.L. (editor)

Publication year

2016

Abstract

Social Media (SM) is a relatively new phenomenon. Intelligence agencies have been struggling to understand how to exploit the social pulse that flows from this source. The paper starts with a brief overview of SM with some examples of how it is being used by adversaries and how we might be able to exploit this usage. Often treated as another form of open source intelligence (OSINT), we look at some of the differences with traditional OSINT compared to SM then outline the possible uses by military intelligence. The next section looks at how SM fits into the different phases of the intelligence cycle: Direction, Collection, Processing and Dissemination. For the first phase, Direction, a number of questions are identified that can be answered typically by SM. For the second phase, the Collection, it is explained how SM, as an asset, transfers questions into methods and the use of different SM resources (e.g. marketer, cognitive behavioral psychologist) and sources to seek the required information. SM is exploited as a multi-intelligence capability. For the Processing phase some aspects are described in how to deal with this capacity (e.g. enabling other intelligence sources) and also which techniques are used to be able to validate the SM sources used. © 2016 SPIE.

Subject

2015 Human & Operational Modelling
MO - Military Operations
ELSS - Earth, Life and Social Sciences
INT Cycle
OSINT
Social Media Intelligence
Behavioral research
INT Cycle
Intelligence agencies
Intelligence sources
Military intelligence
Open source intelligence
OSINT
Second phase
Social media
Social networking (online)