Using Social Media for Global Security

Chapter 11

Influencing Crowds

Crowdsourcing platforms provide a safe space where you can discreetly persuade populations to adopt new viewpoints and change their behavior. Although the influence process is slow and fragile, it confers enormous power and advantage. Through crowdsourcing platforms, you can spur populations to undertake actions and help you complete seemingly unachievable security objectives. This chapter explicates the process by describing what is possible, how you can make it possible, what is not possible, and how influence platforms differ from other types of platforms. It also walks through how to build and run an influence platform to collect intelligence on the ties between extremists and government officials by getting participants to talk about their daily lives and then submit intelligence about corruption in their government.

Understanding the Scope of Influencing through Crowdsourcing

Influencing through crowdsourcing platforms is the act of persuading populations to adopt certain ideas and/or undertake certain behaviors. Such platforms, known as influence platforms, differ from traditional types of influence operations in a number of ways. Influence platforms enable you to take advantage of the two-way communication that is integral to social media in ways that other influence operations cannot. The most apparent difference is that on influence platforms you work closely with the participants to engender influence. You do not inundate them with information ...