Monitoring Social Media Lessons for Future Department of Defense Social Media Analysis in Support of Information Operations William Marcellino, Meagan L. Smith, Christopher Paul, Lauren Skrabala CORPORATION Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit rand/pubs/permissions. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at rand/giving/contribute rand Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication. ISBN:978-0-8330-9820-7 For more information on this publication, visit rand/t/RR1742 Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. R is a registered trademark. Cover: sdecoret/Fotolia. iii Preface Social media is playing an important and increasing role in U.S. military information operations (IO), because people around world, including civilian populations, U.S. allies, and U.S. adversaries, use social media platforms to share information and persuade others. Te rapid growth of the communication technologies that underpin social media platforms has given nonstate adversaries an asymmetric advantage, as have the low cost of entry and the relative operational agility with which they, in contrast to established bureaucracies, can access and utilize new technologies. And so, while there are compelling national security reasons to feld a social media analysis capability, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) must do so both while navigating U.S. law and cultural norms and under conditions of great uncertainty. Amid quickly evolving technologies and communication trends, there is a risk that DoD could invest in soon-to-be obsolete capabilities or encounter other challenges in building its analytic capacity and apply- ing it in an efective and practical manner. Tis report explores these complex issues and ofers DoD a set of recommendations for building a social media analysis capability in support of IO that ably and appropriately enhances national security. It should be of particular interest to the U.S. military joint information operations community. Given both the urgency and the challenges in developing this capacity, and in light of a congressionally mandated assessment, DoD has a clear need for a research survey of the existing literature on social media analysis technologies, best practices, legal ivMonitoring Social Media and ethical constraints to social media analysis, and the intersection of IO and social media analytics. Tis research was sponsored by the Combating Terrorism Tech- nical Support Ofce and conducted within the International Security and Defense Policy Center of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center spon- sored by the Ofce of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staf, the Uni- fed Combatant Commands, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community. For more information on the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center, see rand/nsrd/ndri/centers/isdp or contact the director (contact information is provided on the web page).
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