Social media monitoring is a hot topic. We’re also seeing increased demand for this service. More than ever, organizations need to include comprehensive social media monitoring in their risk mitigation programs.
Social media has become an alternative news outlet to traditional, vetted sources. These platforms allow groups of all ages, ideologies and convictions to consume information and voice opinions—often positioned as facts—with abandon. Bottom line: Social media is inexorably woven into the fabric of today’s society and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
What is social media monitoring?
Social media monitoring involves identifying and analyzing online posts or conversations that mention keywords, often in real time. This article explores how monitoring social media can be used for threat identification and risk management.
If monitoring a massive number of social media sites for an extensive list of keywords, all in real or near-real time, sounds daunting, you’re right. Even with cutting-edge technology, a dedicated team of trained professional analysts must sift through a vast amount of data, analyze the information, and quickly react to identified threats. Without the assistance of technology, the task would be impossible.
How is social media monitoring done?
Many Integras clients want to know if their organization and/or key executives are being threatened or targeted for violence. Consider the example of one company with five key executives. The company has various trade names, and the executives have nicknames and married names, so the number of monitored names jumps to ten. To continue our simple example, the client is only interested in threatening terms, not sentiment or derogatory terms. The English language includes literally hundreds of threatening terms that should be monitored, but we’ll use 100 for illustration. Multiply that by the number of sites to search, which may equal thousands of search combinations to run continuously.
Real life becomes more complicated. We not only monitor our clients’ names, but also their social media handles, email addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information. Some threats are expressed by emojis and foreign languages. Clearly, promptly catching any threat would be challenging, even with unlimited staff and budget.
We use a sophisticated technology solution that persistently scrapes social media, internet and dark web data to scan millions of posts for possible threats. Flagged posts are then stored for analyst review. Many of these flagged posts are irrelevant. Consider the sporting industry, where posts mentioning “bomb,” “shot,” or “death” (as in “sudden death”) may be picked up as threats. Plus, many people posting about sports are devoted to their teams and post threatening language filled with hyperbole. Such posts still need to be reviewed to determine relevancy.
Outside sports, someone who does something well could be described as “killing” or “murdering” it. Maybe someone is “gunning” for a promotion, gets “blown away” by a presentation, or thinks a work party was a “blast.” There are countless examples of false positives that get flagged for review. While artificial intelligence is getting better at identifying legitimate threats, the technology is imperfect. Identifying legitimate concerns requires trained analysts who understand the subtleties and nuances of idioms and other figurative language.
How are threatening posts handled?
Once analysts identify a threatening post, the client receives immediate notification. Law enforcement may also be contacted, depending on the severity of the threat. However, because of the anonymity offered by the internet and social media sites, identifying the person making the threat may not be easy. This task also requires a trained team to research the person’s name, username, picture, phone number, email address, and any other available information, using open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques for positive identification. Sometimes, analysts must comb through numerous posts and interactions for additional research leads.
Once the threat actor is identified, analysts must then develop their personally identifiable information and address history to investigate any criminal matters that may make the threat more credible. This research can range from a national criminal database search to a more in-depth background check, including court, media, internet, and other research. Some investigations extend beyond U.S. borders and get very complicated, very quickly. Developing a profile of the individual allows a clearer threat picture to emerge.
Social media monitoring: A critical tool
While social media can help people stay in touch with family and friends, make new acquaintances, share useful information, and exchange ideas, it also provides a platform for people to share their violent beliefs and intentions. Technology and human skill are required to identify actionable intelligence to safeguard organizations and people. Social media monitoring will only continue to grow in importance.
Please contact us to learn more about social media monitoring and how we can help you.
