Okay try a new direction for this subject. Not much input now. So I'm going with the assumption that SM plays into protest, movements and/or revolutions in a country. So I'm going down a road most of us know, insurgency/asymmetric warfare.
No matter which Intel Disciplines is used it's still all about how one uses the differences in Tasking, Collection, Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination. Most ArcGiS, AnB and Palantir. For me this is some ideas I have for using SM within Intel Cycle and doing some Social Network Analysis (SNA). Here is my assessment broken down for thought and digesting.
Planning and Direction. The first step in the cycle, planning and direction, involves the management of the entire intelligence effort, from the identification of a need for data to the final delivery of the intelligence product to the consumer. The process consists of identifying, prioritizing, and validating intelligence requirements, translating requirements into observables, preparing collection plans, issuing requests for information collection, production, and dissemination, and continuously monitoring the availability of collected data. In this step specific collection capabilities are tasked, based on the type of information required, the susceptibility of the targeted activity to various types of collection activity, and the availability of collection assets. (
http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/ioss/threat96/part02.htm)
Intelligence Preparations of the Battlefield (IPB) is noteworthy for its flexibility. IPB is still a sound method and has useful applications to today's contemporary operating environment. And yes it has been adapted by inter-agencies and law enforcement as well. However, it is not a comprehensive solution. IPB was developed to fight the Soviet bloc forces in the Fulda Gap of northern Europe. Its predictive/estimative value (most likely/most dangerous course of action) was derived from the Red Army's rigid adherence to published doctrine. The Gulf War destroyed adversarial faith in Soviet doctrine, leaving many adversary states and non-state actors to develop their own unpublished doctrine. We now use IPB to fit a newer need, yet fundamentally flawed in most settings. Because of this the IPB theme was changed by NGA to fit this insurgency/asymmetric in what is now Intelligence Preparation of the Environment (IPE or sometimes Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment -- IPOE). So now we have Social Network Analysis (SNA) which is about entities and the relationships between them online or cyber. SNA has a number of variations within the intelligence community ranging from techniques such as association matrices through link analysis charts for visualization, right up to the validated mathematical models of statistics and data. Most Intelligence analyst knows I2's Analyst Notebook and Palantir for visualization linkage charts yet many Analysts don’t know how we can look at SM to conduct a threat modeling process in SNA for operations. Does SNA answer the basic question of what the Information will be used for Intelligence?
We is something to think about, the normal way of doing things with standard software.
http://youtu.be/FXTxs2UqHY4