For homeland
security and
intelligence analysis communities,
social media presents
immense opportunities to study
terrorist group behavior, including
their recruiting and public relation
schemes and the grounding social
and cultural contexts. Even think
tanks and social science and business
researchers are conceptually
using social media as an unbiased
sensor network and a laboratory for
natural experimentation, providing
valuable indicators and helping test
hypotheses about social production
and interactions as well as their
economic, political, and societal
implications.