Social Media and Unconventional Warfare

[Dayuhan]

I tried to post this on the blog...

A few points...

This sentence kind of stuck out for me...

The Arab Spring demonstrated how social media can congregate its users digitally, then quickly shift to directing or influencing some form of focused physical mass or swarm.

That seems to suggest that "social media" have a degree of agency and even consciousness beyond that of their users, an idea that I suspect requires a little cautious examination.

Examinations of decentralized, leaderless forms of organization, whether or not they are enabled by social media, need to look not only at the undoubted power these entities have to produce agitation and disruption, but also at the extreme difficulty they have in structuring an aftermath to agitation and disruption. An amorphous, leaderless mass is difficult to counter and can bring a government down - particularly if that government is already regarded as expendable by its own military and other key internal elements - but unlike a "traditional" hierarchical resistance, there's often nobody to step into the breach, leaving a vacuum that may be filled by players with agendas very different from those that started the movement (such as the army (as in Egypt), or potentially any number of extremist elements). This deficiency needs to be understood and anticipated by those within the movement and those who would seek to leverage the movement.

While observation of social media could provide invaluable insight to the intelligence community or to UW operators, I suspect that we need to be very careful about any proposed attempt to proactively manipulate social media to achieve an outcome desired by an external party. We're often dealing with rapidly evolving youth subcultures in foreign lands, and an effort (for example) to pose as a local is likely to be quickly busted, potentially with adverse unintended consequences. Even people who are fundamentally on the same page as us may not take kindly to being manipulated.

Above all we have to remember that social media are a tool, not to be confused with the people using the tool. Revolutions happened before social media; people enable their revolutions with the tools they have available. Where the will is there and the moment is right things will happen with or without the social media. If the will isn't there and the moment isn't right social media alone will not produce revolution or anything else. Social media have the capacity to move the will and the moment, but they are not in themselves the will and the moment, and they are only one part of the process creating the will and the moment. We do not want to confuse the tool with the user, or with the job.

[Backwards Observer]

That's funny, an article on the importance of social media can't be commented on due to technical difficulties, "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!".

Joking aside, and as others are pointing out, the powers of 21st century social media may well be formidable, but potential 'market saturation' of a bogus and unfocussed narrative can now have theatre-wide, even global negative impact. Naturally, this cuts both ways for any respective participants.

The 21st century mediums might do well to also focus on what they hope to manifest with their strategic ectoplasm, not just how many tables they can turn.

Having said that, studies may indicate that humans tend to prefer bogus narratives that pander to their preconceived notions, thus consigning narrative generation to a subordinate position viz the target audience.

[davidbfpo]

A different angle to the article - which I have yet to fully absorb - and from journalists, complete with podcast and from the summary:

Governments and security forces are becoming increasingly wise to the role of social media in organising and enhancing protest movements. As a result they are developing new ways to block, hack and track citizens tweets, Facebook and other social media tools in order to prevent unrest.

Protesters and citizen journalists the world over are able to stay one step ahead, however with the help of Open Source developed phone apps that allow them to communicate effectively without being tracked as easily. From letting friends know if you've been arrested to getting your story public, there is an app for all possible situations.

Link:http://www.frontlineclub.com/events/...e-media-1.html

[Bob's World]

Of course "social media" are just one arrow in the modern quiver of information tools that are reshaping how seriously governments everywhere have to take the perceptions and concerns of the populaces they affect (their own and those that belong to other nations alike).

To overly focus on "social media" is to miss the larger point. UW is simply leveraging and enhancing the insurgent conditions within some populace or populaces of a country who's government one seeks to coerce, influence, overthrow, etc. We have a traditional bag of tools, tactics, techniques and procedures for doing that based largely upon the lesson's learned from various operations in WWII. Technology has advanced since then, but UW is the same. The question for the US as a whole is "do we appreciate how organizations such as AQ are counducting UW today with more modern tools, techniques and procedures to attempt to leverage conditions of insurgency among many dissatisfied populaces, primarily in the greater Middle East" (or do we simply lump them as a terrorist organization consisting of "Al Qaeda and its affiliates and adherents" as in the National strategy for Counterterrorism)?

For SOF, are we updating our own thinking, doctrine, plans, etc to more effectively leverage the tools of our times? For our policy makers are they updating their thinking, policies, programs, etc to more effectively advance US national interests in a manner least likely to provoke popular blowback or trigger a "resistance" effect among the affected popuulaces?

The times are changing, the tools are changing. Governments, Policies, doctrine, plans, etc are all lagging far behind.

[max161]

Not directly related to Brian's excellent article but this 8:51 minute You Tube video is worth watching (it is the one that Daniel Drezner is referring to in his article below). I hear 20 cents bouncing on the floor as the traditional paradigm is breaking!! :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSZqP...ature=youtu.be

I have seen the future of teaching and it scares the bejeezus out of me
Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - 12:46 PM Share
http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/pos...ezus_out_of_me

I like to think of myself as a pretty good teacher. I've been doing this for more than 15 years, and while I've dabbled in the fancier technologies, I've concluded that the meat and potatoes of podium, lectern, chalk, and blackboard have worked the best.

At last week's International Studies Association meetings, however, I participated in a panel on "Transnational Politics and Information Technology," in which Charli Carpenter delivered the following presentation:

(link above)

Now, I'm clearly pretty comfortable with Web 2.0 technologies, and some of the themes Carpenter touches on in this presentation echoes points I've made on this blog and... co-authoring with Carpenter. To be blunt, however, if this is the standard to which future international relations teaching pedagogy will be held... then the future is going to kick my ass.

Seriously, watch the whole thing.

[Bill Moore]

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Posted by Max161

I like to think of myself as a pretty good teacher. I've been doing this for more than 15 years, and while I've dabbled in the fancier technologies, I've concluded that the meat and potatoes of podium, lectern, chalk, and blackboard have worked the best.

Dave,

Please check out the link above, and actually take one of the math modules to get an idea of how it works. It has been updated since I last checked it out, and now they have quite a few history classes (haven't checked those out yet), but I can vouch for the math modules. I was able to use them to refresh some skills so I could assist someone, and then got them hooked on the KhanAcademy.

Agreed you're a good teacher, but now imagine instead of teaching a class of 20-40 students, and like all people they only hold their attention to one topic for so long, and they're attention may have drifted when covered a critical point. Hopefully they'll pick it up in their reading assignments, or when conductinga group study. This method has worked for years, still works, but now imagine the future and the future is now.

You're an internet star teacher, you're still using your blackboard, but it is a digital blackboard, and students can replay your teaching modules/lectures repeatedly until they feel comfortable with it, and by the way you now have students around the world. The military is experimenting with this, but most of their classes in my view are overly dumbed down and not challenging or progressive in nature, but more of a check the block training requirement. If you buy into the argument we need more disruptive thinkers, and that higher education that challenges your current perceptions is what helps develops those disruptive thinkers, and we're getting people into those classes too late in their careers, well here is another venue to expose all our soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors to challenging higher education. They can pick the topics they like, the goal isn't a degree, but developing a crtical thinker.

In some respects this does relate to UW. There was a relatively recent study on public places and social mobilization. Most revolutions used public spaces (schools, churches, mosques, public squares) to mobilize people to their cause. In areas with repressive governments a revolutionary had to carefully develop a clandestine network whose communication was very channelized, encrypted and security was more important than transfering the message (protect your clandestine organization at all costs), at least until you can generate a popular uprising. While I think you still need a clandestine body (perhaps a shadow government that is pulling the strings), now you can anonomously communicate with the masses when the masses have access (or access to those who do) to the various forms of media. You can reach out to them, make a convincing argument (equivalent of Anwar Awlaki messages reaching out to a global audience), and provide instruction on they can do for the cause. You wouldn't know who was doing it, it would be a nightmare for security forces to disrupt, and their actions in themselves could gain enough momentum to achieve your political aim, if not they'll provide a major distraction for security forces while your more formal organization undertakes more decisive action. There are hundreds of ways this can play out. I hear all the warnings that the government can shut it down, but I don't think it is that easy, and of course there are ways a savvy operator can continue to work. They won't shut down this means of communication for any length of time in a high tech socieity without doing serious damage to the economy.

Just some thoughts on the potential, while not dismissing the challenges.

[max161]

Bill,
That is Dan Drezner's quote from the article not mine!

[Dayuhan]

You're an internet star teacher, you're still using your blackboard, but it is a digital blackboard, and students can replay your teaching modules/lectures repeatedly until they feel comfortable with it, and by the way you now have students around the world.

The problem that nobody's yet solved with this, relative to a physical classroom, is that the teacher can't see the students, can't see if their attention is drifting, can't see if someone looks confused, can't alter the pattern of the lesson to suit immediate verbal or non-verbal feedback from the class. The teacher can't ask questions at key moments to see if the message is getting across, can't respond on the spot to student questions, can't get students to engage in discussion among themselves, guiding and observing that discussion to determine the extent to which the students are "getting it".

We've all seen how the inability to use non-verbal cues results in misunderstanding in online discussions... that's as much a factor, potentially more, in online educational environments.