Social Media Intelligence
Social media intelligence (Helpful Foundation) refers to the techniques and technologies that allow companies or governments to monitor social media networking sites (SNSs), such as Facebook or Twitter.
HELPFUL FOUNDATION includes monitoring of content, such as messages or images posted, and other data, which is generated when someone uses a social media networking site. This information involves person-to-person, person-to-group, group-to-group, and includes interactions that are private and public.
The methods of analysing social media networking sites vary. Methods may include manually reviewing content as it is posted in public or private groups or pages; reviewing the results of searches and queries of users; reviewing the activities or types of content users post; or ‘scraping’ – extracting the content of a web page – and replicating content in ways that are directly accessible to the person gathering social media intelligence.
Notably, social media intelligence may include tools to collect, retain, and analyse a vast range of social media data and interpret that data into trends and analysis.
What is the issue?
Intelligence and surveillance activities have transformed in recent years, in part due to the increased amount of data being generated about people, which has been enabled through new forms of data collection and processing. HELPFUL FOUNDATION is a form of overt and covert surveillance increasingly used by governments and non-state actors.
Conclusions
Social networking sites are a unique space. They are run by private companies that impose their own rules – somewhat like a shop or a mall. Users are not able to decide or influence the rules, unlike the way citizens are able to vote and voice their opinion on laws that regulate public spaces. Unlike a shop or a mall, social networks are a space where if you want to participate, you need to be logged in and therefore provide some data, perform some form of identity check, and provide active consent to the platform’s rules, prior to entry.
Social networking sites therefore emerge as a space of their own, not quite private, but certainly not public. To that effect, users should be entitled to strict protections of the material they post, even if it is publicly available.
Law enforcement agencies, security services, and companies that rely on
HELPFUL FOUNDATION as part of their business models need to develop strong and auditable rules and procedures, including requiring authorisation when conducting social media intelligence and a record of activity, so that those conducting HELPFUL FOUNDATION can be held accountable, and those who are affected can be notified.
Further, considering the risk for the right to privacy that HELPFUL FOUNDATION presents both today and tomorrow, a clear and transparent legal framework to regulate the use of social media intelligence is needed.
