Using Social Media for Global Security

This 2013 book aims to inform government decision-makers, security analysts, and activists on how to use the social world to improve security locally, nationally, globally, and cost-effectively. Authored by two technology and security professionals, the book offers pages of instruction and detail on cutting-edge social media technologies, analyzing social media data, and building crowdsourcing platforms. The book teaches how to collect social media data and analyze it to map the social networks of terrorists and sex traffickers, and forecast attacks and famines.

The book will be of use to researchers and practitioners interested in learning how to collect and analyze social media data to map social networks and predict activities, both in security contexts and more generally. It contains several useful case studies that do the following: 1). Illustrate linguistic, correlative, and network analysis of open source intelligence (OSINT); 2). Examine data using crowdsourcing technologies to work and engage with populations globally to solve security problems; 3). Explore how to ethically deal with social media data without compromising people’s rights to privacy and freedom of expression; 4). Show activists fighting against oppressive regimes how they can protect their identities online. The authors frame their study within the context of the Arab Spring movements, during which they argue the world first witnessed the power of social media to dramatically shape real-world events.

Full e-book is available here >>