Providing Focus via a Social Media Exploitation Strategy

摘要

For the most part, intelligence agencies have been mere by-standers in the realm of social media (SM). The vast majority of studies and intelligence reports have been post hoc; few if any have been conducted in near- real time. In interviews with intelligence analysts, it was stated that some real-time analysis was conducted simply by using personal twitter accounts for situational awareness. Fraught with security risks and methodological problems, this manner of analysis is not recommended. Contributing to the problem in dealing with SM are the facts that this domain is constantly changing and that there is massive amounts of potential data. Analysts are overwhelmed. Given limited budgets and resources, it is not evident what set of tools and methods can best be brought to bear. This paper presents a possible solution in the form of strategies that will help focus effort and position analysts to build expertise.