Social Media: the widest impact of (merged thread)

[davidbfpo]

Ann Marie Slaughter, of R2P fame, pops in different places and thanks to a "lurker" she has written 'The Media Cold War', which appears on a Swiss think tank's website:http://isnblog.ethz.ch/international...dia-cold-war-2

She opens with:

An information war has erupted around the world. The battle lines are drawn between those governments that regard the free flow of information, and the ability to access it, as a matter of fundamental human rights, and those that regard official control of information as a fundamental sovereign prerogative. The contest is being waged institutionally in organizations like the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and daily in countries like Syria.

It ends with:

Americans say that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Citizens’ access to information is an essential tool to hold governments accountable. Government efforts to manipulate or block information should be presumed to be an abuse of power – one intended to mask many other abuses.

[davidbfpo]

An ICSR report 'Who Matters Online: Measuring influence, evaluating content and countering violent extremism in online social networks' by J.M. Berger & Bill Strathearn. Fifty-three pages and in the summary ends with:

Finally, we believe that these metrics are only a starting point for the study of extremist use of social media. We believe the metrics and approaches here can be further refined, and we believe that additional research may yield substantial new
techniques for monitoring and countering the promotion of violent ideologies online.

Link:http://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/...Strathearn.pdf

[davidbfpo]

In this short paper, we summarise the key opportunities and difficulties social media presents for engagement, intelligence and enforcement. It is far from comprehensive and offers only an overview of each. Nevertheless, it seems to us that the police will now certainly need to use social media to engage with the public, collect intelligence, and investigate crime, both on- and offline. This needs new settlements – in doctrine, resource allocation, operation, capability, regulation and strategy – that allow it to be done in accordance with the principles at the heart of the British model of policing: legitimacy, accountability, visibility, compliance with the rule of law, proportionality, the minimal use of force and engagement with the public.

Link:http://www.demos.co.uk/files/DEMOS_P...pdf?1364295365

Generally I like the work by Demos, but remain unconvinced that there is much intelligence gain in social media. How much sense can be made amidst so much?

[davidbfpo]

A summary of a recent Demos (UK think tank) report:

the Twitter conversations between the Metropolitan Police and the public following the vicious murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich.

Capacity is an issue when, astonishingly:

...45% of the 19,344 tweets they analysed were produced by a single bot network...

It concludes:

...this surge in social media interaction with police is obviously a mixed blessing; there is a small amount of potentially useful information included within a torrent of hearsay and rumour plus the inevitable general noise of people just participating in the #Twitcident without any particular motive.

It seems to me that there are two key social media challenges to police in the aftermath of major incidents:

To ensure that there is extra capacity to monitor social media accounts and ensure that accurate, timely and rumour busting information is sent out at regular intervals.

To have in place a sophisticated system to analyse tweets to provide intelligence and insight.

Link:http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=...&id=b60a7d789b

To actual Demos report:http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/metpoliceuk

[JohnBertetto]

New Geographic Information System (GIS) technology can now map geo-located text, photos and videos that have been uploaded by disaster eyewitnesses to social-media platforms like Twitter and YouTube.

First responders need access to rapid information to react quickly and appropriately during emergencies and there is no way to get information faster than from eyewitness accounts.

Members of the community already use social media to upload and exchange enormous amounts of information during disasters – such as a photo of a bridge that is damaged, or video footage of flood waters rising.

This is vital, near real-time information that can be used to bolster in-house disaster intelligence such as rescue infrastructure maps, weather patterns or video feeds from traffic cameras.

GIS technology could help verify this crowd-sourced data by accessing the time and location of the post.

If a large amount of tweets are clustered within a narrow timeframe and in a certain area, we can be a lot more confident about their veracity...

Once verified, information becomes official intelligence and emergency managers can use it to conduct rescue operations, assess damage to critical infrastructure, and prioritise medical assistance.

Applicability far beyond disaster management.

http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/....Jv7jkmAt.dpuf