The Hill News

As Congress goes about grilling Homeland Security over the department’s monitoring of social mediaâ€"as it did in a hearing last weekâ€"a more fulsome understanding of the benefits of social media monitoring and analysis is needed. The value of social media monitoring extends far beyond the important but niche domain of monitoring terrorist chatter online. Rather than asking why the federal government should monitor social media, Congress should be asking why aren’t more agencies monitoring social media?

Monitoring and analyzing terrorist conversations to gain actionable intelligence is simply the low hanging fruit that agencies can pick to aid their missions. There are at least three additional ways social media monitoring can be usefulâ€"even criticalâ€"for government agencies, and a variety of other, smaller benefits as well.

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