Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

DARPA Dissects Twitter, Facebook, Reddit to Extract Propaganda HOWTOs

posted by n1 on Friday July 11 2014, @11:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-all-an-experiment dept.

APK writes with an article via nakedsecurity.sophos.com:

On Tuesday, The Guardian posted an article about the US military pouring millions into researching how to become a Twitter-user-influencing, propaganda-spewing machine.

The program in question is known as Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC).

SMISC, which was announced in 2011, has been regarded as the means by which the US military can both detect and conduct propaganda campaigns via social media.

While DARPA's social media experiments well might have avoided breaking any law by using only publicly available data, some of its studies are sure to make people uncomfortable.

For example, some of the SMISC research has focused on the Occupy Wall Street protests and those in the Middle East, while other projects have analysed online memes and tweets from celebrities including Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga (described as "the most popular elite user on Twitter", according to The Guardian.

The manager of SMISC, Dr. Rand Waltzman, said in a post that understanding social media is just part of DARPA's "mission of preventing strategic surprise."

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
DARPA Dissects Twitter, Facebook, Reddit to Extract Propaganda HOWTOs | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 78 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @07:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @07:10PM (#67768)

    "I've looked over the moderation on your posts from yesterday. While several of them were from the same user, I don't think any of them were inappropriate" - by LaminatorX (14) on Friday July 11, @11:02AM (#67609)

    Answer the question. Look who you are replying to: Anonymous Coward. WTF do you mean there, Laminator X? Cat got your tongue here too now?? Parent post is by an ac. Do you mean APK (whom you have allowed bad moderation to here as he was complaining about and I looked it over, he is on topic here and yet modded off topic http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=2813&cid=66810 [soylentnews.org] and he says he complained to your staff here of it and yet nothing ws done: Explain that. I can. You are full of shit!)