

DoD: $42,000,000 to influence Social Media - d0ne
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=6ef12558b44258382452fcf02942396a&tab=core&_cview=0

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olefoo
This is small potatoes, a line item in a marketing budget that includes things
like staging exercises to serve as backdrops in Hollywood movies (in exchange
for tight control of the portrayal of US armed forces in said movies), and
recruiting offices in every US city. It would be surprising if an organization
that size didn't spend that much on social media.

~~~
jberryman
+1 for mentioning the influence in Hollywood. Here's a bizarrely chipper
account from defense.gov about how it worked for the recent Transformers
flick:

<http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=46352>

I don't really have good links, but from what I recall aside from outliers
like Apocalypse Now, Dr. Strangelove, etc. the pentagon usually has its
fingers in films that depict the military.

~~~
tedunangst
CGI may eventually change this, but back in the day, if you were filming Top
Gun and you wanted your F-14s to look like real F-14s, you had to work with
the people who had real F-14s.

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mashmac2
Um, I might be missing this, but I don't think we're interpreting this
correctly. The contract title is Social Media in Strategic Communication,
which implies that they're looking at integrating social into their military
communications, not creating DoD Facebook profiles or trying to influence
public sentiment on Twitter.

~~~
IanDrake
I think you need to develop a more healthy skepticism about government.

From the intro:

1\. Detect, classify, measure and track the (a) formation, development and
spread of ideas and concepts (memes), and (b) purposeful or deceptive
messaging and misinformation.

2\. Recognize persuasion campaign structures and influence operations across
social media sites and communities.

3\. Identify participants and intent, and measure effects of persuasion
campaigns.

4\. Counter messaging of detected adversary influence operations.

------
trotsky
Sure, I mean you need a good manual on how to use all that persona management
software effectively.

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/49137822/USAF-RFP-BLOG-WARS-
PERSON...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/49137822/USAF-RFP-BLOG-WARS-PERSONA-
TROLL-MANAGEMENT-SOFTWARE)

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arkitaip
This could eventually find its way into a startup's work:

 _1.Detect, classify, measure and track the (a) formation, development and
spread of ideas and concepts (memes), and (b) purposeful or deceptive
messaging and misinformation.

2.Recognize persuasion campaign structures and influence operations across
social media sites and communities.

3.Identify participants and intent, and measure effects of persuasion
campaigns.

4.Counter messaging of detected adversary influence operations._

Will the resulting research be released to the public? Are there other sites
where one can follow gov sponsored r&d related to the web and software
development?

Great find, thank you.

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sitkack
I can't find the link, but I also remember a Puppet Master project where 5
guys could control the online personas of 50 guys and slowly shift the center
of the conversation in any direction they wanted.

I am sure that the FedBizOpps would get integrated with Puppet Master.

I am so glad that these psyops tools will only be used against bad guys.

~~~
JakeSc
> I am so glad that these psyops tools will only be used against bad guys.

I'm afraid that isn't right. A stated goal from the RFP: "Counter messaging of
detected adversary influence operations."

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cjoh
Where's the Hackernews sense of opportunism. There's no set-aside on this RFP
which means its eligible to anybody.

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GiraffeNecktie
Your local police department would probably be interested in this technology
as well:

"Ottawa police are trying to come up with ways to better tap into social media
sites in the hope that they can get the jump on flash robs like this. In the
meantime, they want anyone who's seen this videotape and knows any of the
suspects to give them a call."

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2011/08/02/ottawa...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2011/08/02/ottawa-
flash-rob.html?ref=rss)

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larsberg
Read the RFP. 3/4 of the goals are about understanding, not influencing. After
reading it, I'm excited about the kind of research I hope gets done and
published around this. Five will get you ten the grad students/profs who work
on it end up creating startups:

" The general goal of the Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC)
program is to develop a new science of social networks built on an emerging
technology base. In particular, SMISC will develop automated and
semi‐automated operator support tools and techniques for the systematic and
methodical use of social media at data scale and in a timely fashion to
accomplish four specific program goals:

1\. Detect, classify, measure and track the (a) formation, development and
spread of ideas and concepts (memes), and (b) purposeful or deceptive
messaging and misinformation.

2\. Recognize persuasion campaign structures and influence operations across
social media sites and communities.

3\. Identify participants and intent, and measure effects of persuasion
campaigns.

4\. Counter messaging of detected adversary influence operations. "

~~~
JakeSc
I have another list for you, where 50% of the goals are about _influencing_ :

"1. Linguistic cues, patterns of information flow, topic trend analysis,
narrative structure analysis, sentiment detection and opinion mining;

2\. Meme tracking across communities, graph analytics/probabilistic reasoning,
pattern detection, cultural narratives;

3\. Inducing identities, modeling emergent communities, trust analytics,
network dynamics modeling;

4\. Automated content generation, bots in social media, crowd sourcing."

~~~
FeministHacker
1 to 3 of your above list are about determining and uderstanding, not
influencing. Sure, ultimately this would be about influencing, but you can't
really do that without the former being well-understood first. Arguably, the
former is actually more important to national security concerns, too (the set
of identities on the internet >> the set of those you will interact with and
be able to influence)

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mashmac2
On the topic of government 'spin' in social media, I highly recommend the book
The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov.

He goes into detail on how different government organizations censor or spin
different types of media, and how the viewpoint that 'everything should be
completely open' is rather naive.

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conradboyle
Good find. I don't know too much about FBO, but I recently read an awesome
article about two Miami guys who exposed the lack of diligence in the contract
award process. They became arms dealers.
[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-stoner-arms-
de...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-stoner-arms-
dealers-20110316?page=1)

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Shenglong
Does this remind anyone else of a Faustian contract?

In all seriousness though, I'm not sure how people would react to social media
sponsored by the DOD - regardless of their actual intentions.

~~~
protomyth
After the media influence on Vietnam, I do believe the DOD pays very close
attention to all forms of media. Plus, looking at social media's use in
revolutions, I would expect the DOD and CIA to be very interested. I would
actually find it scary if the DOD wasn't interested in social media.

