Using Target Audience Analysis to Aid Strategic Level Decisionmaking

Abstract

Albert Einstein famously stated that: Any fool can know; the point is to understand. Over the past 20 years, the United States has known that there exist people with a profound hatred of all that it and the West are, and all that it stands for. During that time the American people and our allies abroad have known war in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and we know that today in Syria, Iraq, in Nigeria and North Africa those enemies plan and plot more violence and more hatred against us. Yet, do we really understand? If there is one observation that has been repeated by military commanders and policymakers alike from almost every nation in our various coalitions, it is the idea that we have not understood our adversary properly. Our nations have the world s most sophisticated intelligence gathering capabilities. We are masters of electronic intelligence, of human intelligence, of signal intelligence, open-source intelligence, and technical intelligence. Yet for all that intelligence, it is a truism that the Arab Spring passed us by; the despicable attacks of September 11, 2001, came as a surprise and the emergence of the Islamic States in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was not predicted. In this monograph, one of the world s leading experts in Information Operations explains the science behind what he calls population intelligence (POPINT). He explains how sophisticated social science research and behavioral profiling can be used to warn us of impeding issues, and how that information might be used by senior strategy makers as a tool for testing and refining strategy. This is not some ethereal dream; Dr. Tatham shows us that these techniques have been used already to great success. Yet he argues, forcefully, that we are collectively still caught up in old ideas and thinking.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 2015
Accession Number
ADA623135

Entities

People

  • Steve Tatham

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Counter WMD
  • Cyber
  • Engineered Resilient Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Employment
  • Foreign Aid
  • Governments
  • Information Operations
  • International Relations
  • Military Science
  • National Politics
  • National Security
  • Personnel Management
  • Psychological Operations
  • Public Relations
  • Social Media
  • Social Networking Services
  • Social Sciences
  • Terrorism
  • United States
  • War Colleges

Readers

  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics