Author Description

The advent of social media combined with unfettered access to inexpensive mobile electronic devices has dramatically increased information sharing throughout populations worldwide. Journalists ascribed terms such as "The Facebook Effect" and "The Twitter Revolution" to recent uprisings in the Middle East, crediting social media as a catalyst to those social movements. Factions demanding change utilized social media to assist in mobilizing activist crowds within their own countries and to garner support on the international stage. The degree to which social media facilitated these movements varied in each country, but the fact that social media played a role in the uprisings is indisputable. This monograph proposes that since people will continue to use social media to help influence future social movements, the US Army needs to better understand, anticipate, and exploit the potential threat presented by social media and mass mobilization in future operating environments. In some cases, intelligence analysts can predict or anticipate effects based on simple pattern analysis or other predictive models. In other instances, this may prove impossible. The US Army may find that using principles of complexity theory can provide the most continuously useful guide to gain insights into how factions intent on social unrest use social media to help organize their movements and advance towards a common goal. Planners can understand potential threats using characteristics of self-organization, anticipate using emergent properties, and exploit the properties of networks inherent in complex adaptive systems. Using complex systems thinking, the Army may be able to develop unique operational approaches to cope with these problems in an increasingly complex environment. Acronyms * Introduction * Background * Understand, Anticipate, Exploit Using Principles of Complexity Theory * Defining Terms * Relevance of Social Media and the Army's Future Operating Environment * Increased urbaniz