Drinking from a firehose: the challenges and opportunities presented by SOCMINT

[First paragraph] We currently understand social media as a virtual community, with real-world impacts, in which it is possible to conduct forms of research and surveillance to discern dominant and dissenting narratives, to be able to track real world events, to understand political thought and social transformation and to acquire information outside of traditional broadcasting outlets. We understand social media to be a collection of platforms in which it is possible to aggregate and discern the preferences, beliefs and activities of target individuals, and we can construct a contextual network for those individuals to aid targeting. Within these conceptions social media is useful for the surveillance opportunities it affords. Less is written about the pro-active activities that can be conducted via social media, which should form part of the multichannel effort to shape communication environments during critical incidents.