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i

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iii

Strategic Studies Institute

and

U.S. Army War College Press

USING TARGET AUDIENCE ANALYSIS TO AID 

STRATEGIC LEVEL DECISIONMAKING

Steve Tatham

August 2015

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copyrighted.
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ISBN 1-58487-699-9
v

FOREWORD

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. He makes a compelling case that the science of Target Audience Analysis 

(TAA) is now so well advanced that it must become 

a key component of future strategic decisionmaking. 

In our current campaigns against ISIS, considerable resources have been ploughed into social media. 

Dr. Tatham argues this is a mistake. He views social 

media not as a precursor to behavior, but simply as 

just another communication conduit. He sees this as 

a continuum of wrong activities being undertaken. In 

Iraq and Afghanistan, he saw how big public relations 

and marketing companies cost the U.S. taxpayer millions of dollars in ultimately failed communication 

and propaganda campaigns. Social media, he argues, 

has become yet another blank checkbook for companies who rely on creative energy rather than empirical understanding to produce communications campaigns. Instead, he argues for far greater resource in 

TAA and greater understanding by federal agencies 

of what is and is not possible or desirable in their communication efforts. To this end, he looks in particular 

at U.S. Agency for International Development relief 

work in Pakistan and argues that the communication 

objectives set at the start of their projects are almost 

unattainable, even naïve, in their presumptions.

This is a rich and insightful paper from a previous 

Strategic Studies Institute author whose first paper 

with us in 2013, U.S. Governmental Information Operations and Strategic Communications: A Discredited Tool or 

User Failure? Implications for Future Conflict, created a 

vi
vii

storm of discussion and constructive debate. This latest paper is destined to follow the same trajectory.

 

 DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

 Director

 Strategic Studies Institute and

 U.S. Army War College Press

ix

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

STEVE TATHAM is the Director of Operations at 

IOTA-Global Ltd, a specialist civilian Information Operations company and is the contracted subject matter 

expert for Strategic Communication and Target Audience Analysis at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Centre of Excellence for Strategic Communication in Latvia. He resigned from the United Kingdom’s 

(UK) Armed Forces in July 2014. 

On leaving, he was the UK’s longest continuously 

serving Officer in Information Activities. Between 1998 

and 2003, he worked in Media Operations, covering 

conflicts in Sierra Leone (2000), Afghanistan (2001), 

and Iraq (2003), where he was public spokesman for 

the invasion. Between 2003 and 2013, he worked in Information Operations and Psychological Operations. 

Dr. Tatham was the Commanding Officer of 15 (UK) 

Psychological Operations Group from 2010 to 2013, 

during which time he deployed on multiple occasions 

to Afghanistan; was involved at the operational level 

in operations in Libya and has deployed to East Africa 

in an advisory role. His final military appointment 

was as the Special Information Operations project 

officer in the UK Ministry of Defence Operations Directorate. In 2007, he advised the then commander of 

British Forces in Afghanistan on influence operations 

when the strategically vital town of Musa Qala was 

retaken by British and Afghan forces. The Pentagon 

later described that operation as the “single best thing 

to come out of Afghanistan.” 

Dr. Tatham is the author of two books: Losing Arab Hearts & Minds. The Coalition, Al-Jazeera 

and Muslim Public Opinion (Hurst & Co, 2006) and 

Behavioural Conflict: Why Understanding People’s 
Motivations Will Prove Decisive In Future Conflict

(Military Studies Press, 2012). Dr. Tatham holds an 

M.Phil. and a Ph.D. in international relations, both focusing on ideas of influence and strategic communication in conflict areas. 

x
xi

SUMMARY

This monograph revealed several recommendations for policymakers.

• Former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 

leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared in November 2014 that: “the world is on the brink of a 

new cold war.”1 The West, he declared, had 

failed because of triumphalism—the belief that 

western, liberal, democratic free market economies were the answer to all ills. Yet across 

Eastern Europe, the Maghreb, the Middle East, 

and on the continent of Africa, unpredicted 

behaviors—some state initiated, some society 

initiated—have demonstrated a massive strategic deficit and an unpreparedness for “black 

swans.”2 The first challenge for policymakers 

is to accept that existing policy structures have 

not met the challenges of an increasingly interconnected and complex world; all too often the 

mechanisms to meet challenges are obscured 

by politics, process, received wisdom, complacency and fear of change. Our structures need 

to adapt: watchwords must be agility, risk, 

adaptation, innovation, and delegation to the 

lowest possible level and to the highest possible discomfort.

• The annexation of Crimea has added a new 

contender to ideas of existential threat; we have 

been slow to learn we are not well equipped 

to understand extreme Islam—we must use 

Crimea as an indicator of the potential for other 

threats—not necessarily motivated by religious 

ideology—and we must avoid complacency 

in assuming we understand why these events 
xii

occur. At the moment, one strand of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) strategy 

is the placement of troops in Baltic nations; 

how does this play with the organic Russianspeaking population in Latvia, Lithuania, and 

Estonia, for example. It may reassure the Latvian government, but does it make internal and 

external Russian operations more or less likely?

• Behavioral profiling is not just the preserve of 

police enforcement and Hollywood. The methodologies used to determine future latent group 

behavior are robust and have been verified and 

validated by defense science organizations in 

the United States and the United Kingdom; 

they could provide an excellent way to not only 

predict behaviors, but also to model response 

options in advance.

• Target Audience Analysis (TAA) can often provide very counterintuitive information, challenging existing received wisdom. For example, 

TAA may help understand if the Agency for 

International Development (AID) is effective 

in reducing terrorism—or as some have argued 

actually counterproductive. The answer to this 

is, of course, likely to be very country or region 

specific. Thus a proper TAA sweep would facilitate strategic understanding of where AID can 

be used as part of an effective public diplomacy 

project and where it should not.
xiii

ENDNOTES - SUMMARY

1. Ex-USSR Leader Gorbachev: World on Brink of New Cold War, 

BBC News, November 8, 2014, available from www.bbc.co.uk/news/

world-europe-29966852, accessed May 3, 2015.

2. The theory of Black Swans was developed by Nassim 

Nicholas Taleb to explain the disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of 

normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology; 

the noncomputability of the probability of the consequential rare 

events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small 

probabilities), and the psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of 

the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs.

1

USING TARGET AUDIENCE ANALYSIS TO AID

STRATEGIC LEVEL DECISIONMAKING

INTRODUCTION

As the U.S.-led coalition comes to the end of its 

campaign in Afghanistan and perhaps contemplates 

the possibility of another protracted engagement dealing with the threats posed by the Islamic States in Iraq 

and Syria (ISIS), the wisdom of hindsight seems to 

flood bookshelves, staff college papers, and retiring 

commanders’ valedictory media interviews. In retrospect, it appears that everyone knew what should have 

been done if only resource, time, political expediency, 

military capability—pick your own explanation—had 

allowed in the post-September 11, 2001 (9/11) years. 

Thus, we hear from the former Chief of the United 

Kingdom (UK) General Staff, General Sir Peter Wall, 

who told the BBC that, in Afghanistan: “We [the UK 

military] had put forward a plan saying that for the 

limited objectives that we had set ourselves, this [British Forces levels] was a reasonable force. And I freely 

admit now that calculus was wrong.”1 In considering 

the threat posed by ISIS, the U.S. President declared 

that: “we [the U.S. intelligence community] seriously 

underestimated the enemy”;2 while a U.S. Joint Staff 

report declared that: 

There was a failure to recognize, acknowledge, and 

accurately define the environment in which conflicts 

occurred, leading to a mismatch between forces, capabilities, missions, and goals . . . as a result, U.S. military training, policies, doctrine, and equipment were 

ill-suited to the tasks that troops actually faced in Iraq 

and Afghanistan.3
2

At the operational and tactical level, successive post 

operational tour reports bemoan the absence of this or 

that capability. 

Of course, such reflection is not unreasonable, 

but what it perhaps surprisingly illustrates is that, 

despite the massive military and economic might of 

nations such as the United States and despite huge 

technological advantages, the conduct of warfare can 

still be pretty “hit and miss.” The 9/11 intelligence 

community failings are well known, yet despite very 

extensive work put in place after that horrific event 

to rectify those failings and streamline our corporate 

understanding of the world, no intelligence service 

predicted the Arab Spring. Certainly, there were daily 

indicators that all was not well but not that various 

isolated events should combine into true regional 

revolutions—that was never seriously considered by 

anyone, let alone the huge internal security apparatus’ of countries such as Egypt, Libya, and Syria. In 

2002-03, the West was apparently certain that Saddam 

Hussein maintained his weapons of mass destruction 

(WMD) arsenals. Colin Powell told the United Nations (UN) that: 

Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort 

. . . to disarm as required by the international community. Indeed, the facts and Iraq’s behavior show that 

Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their 

efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.4

Eleven years after that invasion, we know that was 

simply not correct.

In short, then, what we have seen over the last few 

years is widespread and senior recognition that huge 

swathes of governmental policy—be it U.S. or UK—

have been misguided or ill-informed for a variety of 
3

reasons and that, despite the complexity of our collective intelligence networks, we still consistently fail to 

understand the environments in which we find ourselves working and the opposition that we face. But 

what if that wisdom of hindsight could have existed 

before the event? What if our intelligence mechanisms 

enabled us genuinely to understand the motivations 

and likely behaviors of, for example, the Taliban in 

advance, in a way that would have allowed us to 

model different strategies—to “road test” good ideas 

before their deployment. What if we had known what 

the stimuli would have been for the Al-Anbar uprising and we had been able to trigger it earlier? What if, 

armed with that knowledge, we could use it to trigger 

a rising against Islamic States (IS) occupation? And 

what of ISIS itself? We learned, finally, in Afghanistan that we should stop regarding the Taliban as a 

homogenous and cohesive group and instead focus on 

the disparate reasons for people attaching themselves 

to its aims. How useful would a similar understanding be for deciding strategy for dealing with ISIS? 

Perhaps the rather surprising answer to all of these 

“What ifs” is that such a capability exists; it has existed 

for years, yet just like Sir Frank Whittle’s invention of 

a jet engine in 1929, it is ignored by policymakers and 

advisers who seem unable or unwilling to embrace 

new ideas and who inexplicably, given the complexity of challenge today, remain wedded to old methods that cost enormous sums and achieve very little.5

Take, for example, an invitation to tender issued by 

the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in September 2014.6

 The objectives for a communication’s plan in Pakistan list: 
4

The Pakistan Outreach and Communication Activity 

will implement a media and communication campaign 

to increase positive public perception and public support for the United States Government [USG] based on 

the development results achieved through the foreign 

assistance programming delivered by the [USAID] 

Mission to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. This Activity continues previous efforts to move Pakistanis 

along the continuum from raising awareness about 

USAID/Pakistan’s development projects to changing 

attitudes and perceptions about USAID, the USG, and 

the U.S. generally.7

These are the types of contracts that are embedded 

in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Department of Defense (DoD), and 

Department of State (DoS) programs. Their instigators 

believe that these public relations based programs 

actually can change the audience’s minds favorably 

towards the United States. Yet, all the evidence would 

seem to suggest that this type of program is destined 

to fail. Why? 

Four good reasons are: First, advertising U.S. largess is seen as boastful and locals find it insulting, demeaning; and patronizing. Second, the USAID brand, 

and in particular its logo, has already become synonymous with U.S. “interference” in local matters and, in 

the Muslim world at least, it is extremely unpopular. 

Third, the locals know perfectly well from where the 

money comes, and they are actually grateful, but do 

not want to feel like victims all the time. They are embarrassed by the incapacity of their own governments 

to provide for them, and they are unable to split the 

presence of USAID (which they appreciate) from wider U.S. foreign policy (which they do not). They might 

be grateful for the aid, but they still hate U.S. policy 
5

in the Arab and Muslim worlds and nothing, apart 

from a substantive policy change, is probably going to 

alter that view—certainly not a few sacks of grain or 

rice and an accompanying public relations campaign. 

Finally, any communications campaign will need the 

local organic media to be involved and, as soon as 

the local media starts publicizing U.S. generosity, it 

starts to lose its credibility in the minds of the locals. 

In short, the strategy is wrong. 

Disagree? This author is not a fan of opinion polling per se, but trend analysis is useful when it is conducted empirically and by respected organizations. 

Take the much used Pew Global Attitudes Survey 

findings in Pakistan: “Roughly three-in-four Pakistanis (74%) consider the U.S. an enemy, up from 69% last 

year and 64% 3 years ago.” Negative opinion in Pakistan towards the United States is rising, not dropping,8

and over the last 12 years, it has remained consistently 

low—never better than 73 percent opposition to the 

United States; and in 2013, 89 percent opposition; this, 

despite massive public diplomacy and aid programs 

and accompanying communication campaigns.9

However, there is a dichotomy here. In the tender 

documentation, USAID acknowledges difficulties: 

“In addition, on-going regional, political, and social 

developments and public perceptions about U.S. policies have increased animosity in Pakistan towards the 

U.S.”10 But later it also declares that: 

the percentage of respondents who think “U.S. aid 

helps the Pakistani people,” increasing from just under 

40 percent in 2012, to over 50 percent in 2013. Polling 

also finds that respondents who have greater awareness of U.S. assistance to Pakistan hold more favorable 

views toward the United States and its programs.11
6

This is the problem with polls—they are highly temporal, depending upon the questions that are asked 

and, as we know from personal experience, what 

people say is often at odds with what they do. Thus 

to “square this circle,” it is perhaps more insightful 

to look at actual behaviors. Here the picture is not as 

bright as USAID’s tender document might have us 

believe. 

The DoS travel advice portal states that travel to 

Pakistan should be avoided. It states that the U.S. 

Government continues to receive information that terrorist groups in South Asia may also be planning attacks in the region, possibly against U.S. Government 

facilities, U.S. citizens, or U.S. interests. The presence 

of al-Qaeda, Taliban elements, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, indigenous sectarian groups, and other terror organizations, many of which are on the U.S. Government’s 

list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations, 

poses a potential danger to U.S. citizens in the region. 

Terrorists and their sympathizers have demonstrated 

their willingness and ability to attack locations where 

U.S. citizens or Westerners are known to congregate 

or visit. The presence of several foreign and indigenous terrorist groups poses a danger to U.S. citizens 

throughout Pakistan. Across the country, terrorist attacks frequently occur against civilian, government, 

and foreign targets. Attacks have included armed assaults on heavily guarded sites, including Pakistani 

military installations and airports. The Government 

of Pakistan maintains heightened security measures, 

particularly in the major cities. Terrorists and criminal 

groups regularly resort to kidnapping for ransom.12

The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) 

seems to concur: 
7

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office advise against 

all travel to: the Federally Administered Tribal Areas; 

the districts of Charsadda, Kohat, Tank, Bannu, Lakki, Dera Ismail Khan, Swat, Buner, and Lower Dir in 

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa; the city of Peshawar and districts south of the city, including travel on the Peshawar to Chitral road via the Lowari Pass; northern and 

western Balochistan; travel on the Karakoram Highway between Islamabad and Gilgit. The FCO advise 

against all but essential travel to: the Kalesh Valley, 

the Bamoboret Valley and Arandu District to the south 

and west of Chitral in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa; the city 

of Quetta; the city of Nawabshah in Sindh Province, 

and areas of interior Sindh to the north of Nawabshah; 

Gilgit-Baltistan. There is a high threat from terrorism, kidnapping, and sectarian violence throughout 

Pakistan.13

In 2013, DoS warned Americans not to travel to 

Pakistan and ordered nonessential government personnel to leave the U.S. Consulate in Lahore because 

of a specific threat to that diplomatic mission.14 In 

2009, a U.S. journal investigated the most dangerous 

nations in the world to be an American citizen: 

We looked at the current geopolitical situation and 

a number of statistical categories, including rates of 

criminal offenses and deaths of U.S. citizens abroad, to 

come up with a list of the 12 most dangerous countries 

for Americans to visit.

Pakistan was number 12.15 In May 2013, Reuters 

reported on a five-fold increase in unaccompanied 

U.S. diplomatic postings because of the danger to U.S. 

citizens’ lives—Pakistan was one of five of the most 

dangerous posts listed.16 In a September 2014 article, 

The Diplomat Journal predicted a deteriorating, not improving, security situation in Pakistan: 
8

For the time being, no group in Pakistan seems able to 

replicate the successes achieved by IS leader Abu Bakr 

al-Baghdadi in Syria and Iraq, but there is no doubt 

that the rise of the IS has galvanized the entire jihadist 

spectrum, making many groups more ambitious and 

aggressive than ever, and thus strengthening their attractiveness among the younger members of the Muslim population, which is a serious threat to the entire 

international community.17

Confusing? This is the problem of polling—polls 

are just not accurate predictors of real behavior and 

can provide very misplaced assurance. Neither is there 

a conclusive body of evidence to support the proposition that international aid efforts are effective counterterrorism tools—in fact, there is a substantial body of 

evidence to suggest just the opposite. The Brookings 

Institution has written that: 

Given aid’s mixed record in supporting economic development and reducing poverty, what can we expect 

from aid in the fight against terrorism? The answer, in 

the short term, is not much.18

Professors Bu Savun and John Hayes of the University of Pittsburgh wrote in their 2011 paper: “aid 

is counterproductive if the recipient government uses 

repressive counterterrorism measures.”19 Even more 

disturbingly, some academics have argued that international aid can actually encourage terrorism, not 

reduce it: 

[M]any U.S. policymakers encouraged the use of 

foreign aid as an instrument to decrease terrorism. 

However, this argument is based on at least two as-
9

sumptions that are the subject of considerable debate 

in the scholarly literature. The first is that terrorism 

is directly caused by problematic social or political 

conditions, such as poverty, lack of education, or oppressive governments. The second is that foreign aid is 

effective at alleviating any of those conditions, including terrorism directly. We contend that foreign aid is 

unlikely to have a pacifying effect on terrorism, and 

instead it might actually offer an incentive for the continuation or increase of terrorist activity.20

Given these competing tensions, and notwithstanding the morality of the world’s richest nations 

supporting the world’s poorest, is the publicizing of 

USAID really a sensible strategy? This author would 

suggest that it may not be and indeed has offered 

numerous previous examples of similar problems 

including in the December 2013 Strategic Studies Institute monograph of how a television campaign to 

quell violence against the United States in Pakistan 

had actually seen an increase in violence immediately 

afterwards.21 Following the publication of that document, what was stunning was the significant numbers 

of U.S. military and diplomatic figures—some surprisingly senior—who made private contact with this author to make known their agreement and offer their 

support for the monograph’s recommendations. From 

their vantage points in embassies and bureaus abroad, 

they offered a view that these types of campaigns 

actually worked very poorly. 

UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS 

OF UNDERSTANDING

First, and surprisingly simple, all layers of authority should understand a single and very basic 
10

concept of communication which is this: Communication is two way—and what is received by the audience (which may not be the intended one) is often at 

significant variance to what is intended. This can be 

shown by two simple models that have been used in 

countless papers and books in the past to illustrate to 

nonsocial scientists and to nonspecialist communicators the mistakes that are being made and which are 

unashamedly repeated here. 

In the 1950s, a model of communication was developed which became known as the “message influence model.” This model was based upon some work 

undertaken by two academics, Claude Shannon and 

Warren Weaver. In 1949, they published their Mathematical Theory of Communication22 which, at its 

inception, was designed to examine interference in 

telephone communication. It has subsequently—and 

perhaps erroneously (because it was never particularly bothered by the syntax of communication)—been 

used as a post-9/11 model for the failure of Westernled communication with global audiences. So, what 

does it look like and why is it relevant to us?

Source: Adapted from Shannon and Weaver, The Mathematical 

Theory of Communication, 1949.

Figure. 1. The Message-Influence 

Model of Communication. 
11

Although simple enough to understand, the model has a number of flaws. First and foremost is that it 

simply does not reflect reality. Audiences do not sit 

passively and receive messages; instead they contextualize them according to a host of external factors. 

For example, in the case of Iraq, if we presume (A) was 

the United States and (B) the Iraqi people, the message 

of liberation and democracy may be heavily contextualized by elements of (B) in the light of revelations of 

torture by (A) at Abu Ghraib prison. Second, the model suggests that communication only occurs when a 

message actually is being transmitted, whereas actions 

and deeds (which are not modelled) send messages 

just as effectively or better than words—actions, as every schoolboy learns, speak louder than words. Third, 

the message presumes success—a potentially perilous supposition. This is perhaps best illustrated by a 

Washington Post article which records the attempts of 

U.S. Soldiers to combat stone-throwing youths in Iraq. 

The article reported that coalition forces in Sadr City, 

Baghdad, were facing a daily barrage of rocks thrown 

by young children. The problem for the coalition was 

how to stop it. Patently, violence, or even the threat 

of violence, against small children, was not an option, 

yet the stone throwing needed to end. 

A U.S. Army psychological operations (MISO) 

team believed that they had an answer and crafted a 

series of leaflets which demanded that the children 

cease throwing stones. Yet, the leaflet campaign failed. 

Why? In this example, the messages to stop were interpreted by the children not as a warning, but as a 

sign of their success against the coalition. The message 

source was self-evidently “the enemy.” The communications channel (the leaflets) did not resonate with the 

young children who either could not read or were not 

minded to read “adult” leaflets. Indeed, in this exam-
12

ple, only the intended audience for the message was 

correctly identified by the MISO. Since the messages 

were received by the children without interference, 

the presumption, using the message influence model, 

was that the plan would be successful; clearly a more 

sophisticated model was needed.

As countless academic studies have shown, messages are heavily contextualized by outside events. 

So it seems “we” might need a new model on which 

to base “our” communication outreach. One possible 

solution is something called the Pragmatic Complexity Model, which draws on research undertaken by 

Niklas Luhmann.23 Luhmann believed that communication was not the simple transmission of messages 

between two minds, but rather a complex system between sender and receiver. In any communication between party (A) and party (B), Luhmann believes that: 

The success of A’s behaviour depends not only on external conditions but on what B thinks and does. And 

what B thinks and does is influenced by A’s behaviour 

as well as B’s expectations, interpretations and attributions with respect to A.24

Figure 2. The Pragmatic Complexity Model 

(Author’s Interpretation).
13

This model presumes that, in any communication, 

the success of (A)’s message depends not only on the 

message alone, but upon what (B) thinks and does. 

And what (B) thinks and does is influenced by (A)’s 

behavior and (B)’s expectations, interpretations, and 

attributions with respect to (A). The model assumes 

that messages are always interpreted within a larger 

and ongoing communication system, and that (A) and 

(B) are therefore locked into a relationship of simultaneous and mutual interdependence. 

Here the success of (A)’s messages depend upon 

the wider external environment and, in particular, on 

(B)’s perception of (A)’s role in that environment. It 

is against that role that (A)’s messages are processed; 

they may be dismissed out of hand or they may be 

accepted, but in a contextualized manner. This model, 

which we think presents a much more realistic interpretation of society, suggests that there is no independent audience (B) waiting to be impacted by (A). 

Instead, both parties are locked into a relationship of 

interdependence.

Unfortunately, this model raises at least three further issues of complexity. The first is that the model 

presumes that (B) is passive. However, in reality (B) 

may itself be engaged in attempting to influence (A). 

Therefore (A)’s messages may themselves be contextualized by its perceptions of (B)’s actions. The second 

consideration is that if (A) can understand (B)’s opinions and attitudes in advance, (A) can prepare its messaging accordingly and thus attempt to mollify the 

effect of Step 5, thus creating a far stronger message. 

The third issue is identifying exactly who are (A) and 

(B). The names are overly simplistic, for they actually 

encompass many different, often disparate, groups, 

and these groups may themselves have some impact 
14

upon the message which may change it from that 

envisaged at sending.

If we apply this thinking to the USAID program, 

then the program will succeed or fail on parts 2, 4 and 

5, i.e., the opinions, attitudes, and behaviors of the 

Pakistani aid recipients’ (B), rather than on the U.S. 

Government’s (A) message. Those opinions, attitudes, 

and behaviors are based on largely and uniformly 

hostile to the United States. As General David Patraeus told Fortune magazine in 2010, “We’re not going to 

put lipstick on pigs.”25

But that does mean that for the USAID program 

to work, very serious research has to be undertaken 

into the existing behavioral motivations to finesse the 

message and the conduit in a way that takes the audiences’ behaviors into consideration and mitigates 

pejorative issues. This may reveal some counterintuitive issues—perhaps even that the United States 

is actually best serviced by not communicating that 

they have provided the aid—because that is the least 

worst option to pursue the desired end effect of reducing negative behaviors towards the United States by 

the Pakistani audience—or it may reveal some other 

unlikely conduit whereby the message can be sent. 

This idea of counterintuitive messaging is examined 

in later sections.

If you subscribe to these ideas, then it is obvious 

that the key step is understanding; the rest of this 

monograph will demonstrate how the proper employment of empirical social science methodologies can 

aid understanding of complex problems and assist 

strategy makers.
15

EMPLOYING SOCIAL SCIENCE FOR 

STRATEGIC DECISIONMAKING

In the early morning hours of January 16, 2013, a 

coordinated band of terrorists attacked a convoy of 

gas refinery workers as they departed the housing 

area of the In Amenas gas refinery in eastern Algeria. 

By the end of the 4-day siege that followed, at least 39 

foreign hostages had been killed, along with 29 of the 

32 hijackers. It could have been worse; some 700 Algerian workers and more than 100 foreigners managed 

to escape. 

Following the attack, The Times newspaper carried 

a satirical cartoon showing the British Prime Minister playing whack-a-mole against a variety of international terrorist threats.26 The cartoon referred to the 

need to react continuously to unexpected crises and 

threats. Since that cartoon was published, one could 

confidently add some extra holes: Ukraine, with a 

resurgent Russian President emerging; Iraq (with an 

ISIS fighter) and Nigeria (with a Boko Haram terrorist). Western politicians will continue to play whacka-mole forever unless better efforts are made preemptively to understand the location and nature of as 

yet latent threats. For all the phenomenal intelligence 

architecture and power of the United States and its 

allies, it is clear that population intelligence remains 

elusive; it is still hard to predict what groups may do 

what to whom and why. 

The solution to this problem is strategic target 

audience analysis (TAA)—the adaptation of a tactical psychological operations tool for strategic level 

problem solving. As we will see, TAA allows one to 

identify, in advance, key groups—who may not yet 

have emerged—through accurate behavioral profil-
16

ing of groups. The process also provides a measure 

of “influenceability” of that groups—key information 

for policymakers to know in advance. 

So let us return to USAID’s problem. They want to 

distribute aid, and they want the Pakistani recipients 

to like, or at least not hate, the United States. Implicitly, they want to use this increased positive awareness of the “good” U.S. to reduce anti-U.S. behavior. 

This author has written extensively about the misplaced assurance that people have in the relationship 

between attitudes and behaviors, the fact that positive 

attitudes and perceptions are not strong precursors to 

good behavior but that, paradoxically, once a behavior 

has been established, there is a significantly increased 

chance that positive attitudes will follow. Therefore, 

this author would argue that USAID should first be 

either undertaking or placing contracts for social research of audiences, and that they should be considering their campaigns in a behavioral, not attitudinal, 

framework. Certainly, they should be looking at a 

program that will not just involve overpaid contractors broadcasting at them.27 Any such program would 

involve a six-step solution: 

Step 1: Identify what the audience was currently 

doing and thinking—and understand why. We might 

call this the Strategic Campaign Planning phase. 

Step 2. Establish under what circumstances the audiences’ behaviors could be changed and which triggers were the strongest—this is the TAA phase, and 

one of its key steps is to benchmark current behavior 

because that data is vital for Step 6 later. 

Step 3. Armed with this information, present strategic options to the client balancing cost, risk, and 

likely effect. 
17

Step 4. Design the strategic intervention—the 

Campaign Intervention Strategy. 

Step 5. Deploy the campaign. 

Step 6. Assess the resultant change in the audience—the Measures of Effect (MOE). 

In its entirety, this is an empirical process and one 

that places the audience at the absolute center of the 

entire campaign. This might seem absolutely obvious, 

and yet it is astonishing how often the target audience disappears from strategy making. Consider this 

example from Afghanistan.

During the Winter 2007 deployment to Helmand, 

then Brigadier Andrew Mackay, the commander of 

British Forces, completely changed the lexicon of his 

9,000 plus troops, affording primacy to the population rather than to dealing with the enemy. In his post 

operation tour report he wrote: 

In the [counterinsurgency] campaign, the population 

are the primary focus of all agencies, including the 

military, since this is a battle for consent and support. 

This is counter-intuitive to a military trained for warfighting, whose natural inclination was to put the enemy at the center of its thinking.28

In essence, he asked his team to think of the conflict 

in Helmand as an eco-system—with undecided civilian population at its center, not the enemy, and the 

need to understand the behavior of that nodal point 

as the key driver for military operations. This was difficult, and Mackay freely admits that he was working 

not from doctrine or army manuals, but from behavioral economics books such as Nudge and Predictably 

Irrational. In both of these books, he saw solutions to 

operational military problems. That operational tour 
18

was characterized by success and has been described 

by many commentators as the tipping point in the 

battle for Helmand. Yet, in truth, Mackay’s operational design pulled together different ideas and notions 

and attempted to place them into a military context 

fairly randomly and with no real guarantee of success 

at the outset. As it transpires, his agility of thinking 

and, more importantly, his absolute willingness to 

take risk, paid handsome dividends and has subsequently provided a real model for future conflicts. At 

the outset, the outcome was unknown, and, above all 

else, Mackay generated tremendous sense of purpose 

and leadership in ensuring his ideas were embedded 

among his sometime skeptical subordinates.

But what if the commander did not have to pull together randomly different ideas but instead was provided with a proper behavioral profile that he could 

have used in his military planning—one that modeled likely behaviors and offered, in advance, potential solutions. A distant aspiration or real possibility? 

Neither—for it is a reality, and between 2012-13, the 

behavioral profiling of group behavior was properly 

validated and verified by the UK Ministry of Defence 

(MoD). Farfetched? To some, for sure. But no more 

farfetched than the driverless car or internet enabled 

contact lenses—both recent Google inventions.

Behavioral Profiling. 

Of course, behavioral profiling is not a new capability. In the West, behavioral profiling is now an 

established and recognized part of law enforcement 

operations. Take the case of the (metaphorical) serial 

killer; do they leave the eyes of their victims open? If 

they do, then police know they are searching for a par-
19

ticular type of personality—perhaps one that is vain 

and wishes to be admired and watched; the center of 

attention. Yet, if the perpetrator leaves the eyes shut, 

then the police have a completely different pool of 

potential perpetrators to search within—perhaps individuals who are shy, embarrassed, who hide away 

from attention and limelight. The Federal Bureau of 

Investigation’s behavioral science unit, made famous 

by countless Hollywood films and now called The Behavioral Research and Instruction Unit, trains police 

officers from all of the world in this science of behavior. In the UK, Prime Minster David Cameron, soon 

after entering office, established the so-called “nudge 

unit,” a behavioral science research branch inside The 

Cabinet Office, to look at how the emerging science 

of behavioral economics could be used in government 

applications—for example, in reducing rates of diabetes, and obesity, which place such a drain on the UK’s 

publicly funded health service. 

But this is very much in the realms of profiling after the event. What if you could profile in advance—to 

predict what actions groups—not individuals—may 

take? Many corporate organizations now employ psychometric testing to determine personality type and 

intellect—in order to see if the prospective job applicant will fit into the culture and ethos of the company 

in the future. The Revelian Behavioral Profile, for example, indicates how people are likely to approach 

problems, interact with others, and respond to the 

pace of the environment. Revelian’s Cognitive Ability 

Test consists of 51 questions, which require applicants 

to process either verbal, numeric, or abstract information to answer the question correctly. The questions 

become more difficult as the test progresses and range 

in difficulty from those that 97 percent of people 
20

answer correctly, to questions that only 2 percent 

answer correctly. This broad range of question types 

and difficulty levels means that it is possible to assess 

general cognitive ability. Furthermore, by comparing 

individual’s scores to relevant normative groups, the 

test can fairly accurately predict potential job performance. Of course, everyone is familiar with behavioral profiling for jobs and from the abundance of TV 

programs its application in criminal justice, but this 

is just the tip of the iceberg. For example, researchers studying animal behavior have always been aware 

that individual animals may differ in their behavior, 

for a number of reasons such as age, sex, physical 

condition, or past experience. An increasing body of 

evidence suggests that another factor responsible for 

consistent and (sometimes) predictable differences in 

behavior is temperament. Behavioral profiling is the 

term used to describe a variety of different methods 

that attempt to measure individual differences in 

temperament or personality to assist in the captive 

management of wild animals in zoos.29

In homeland security, behavioral profiling has become routine. As of March 2010, the Transportation 

Security Administration (TSA) deployed about 3,000 

behavior detection officers (BDOs) at an annual cost of 

about $212 million; this force increased almost 15-fold 

between March 2007 and July 2009. BDOs have been 

selectively deployed to 161 of the 457 TSA-regulated 

airports in the United States at which passengers and 

their property are subject to TSA-mandated screening 

procedures.30 In short, the use of social science to assess latent behavior is neither new nor revolutionary—

and yet its application in the military domain remains 

corporately nugatory, despite attempts by individual 

commanders to shed light on this valuable tool. 
21

This is surprising—not least because elements of 

the human terrain have taken such a notable focus of 

attention in recent operations. Biometric and DNA 

data collection, for example, enabled the mapping of 

human networks in the fight against improvised explosive device (IED) networks in Helmand. Yet, in 

this one fundamental area, there continues to remain 

a deep-seated weakness—that of understanding the 

human terrain as a collective whole from the perspective of behaviors. Observers of the Afghan conflict repeatedly have mentioned that there was a collective 

failure to understand the human environment in a 

meaningful manner. It is almost paradoxical that the 

more human terrain data was collected, seemingly the 

less was known and understood. Families, tribal linkages, and the identity and location of ideologues were 

known, but it proved difficult and often impossible 

to assemble all of this “noise” into meaningful and 

actionable data. 

WHAT IS TARGET AUDIENCE ANALYSIS?

What TAA reveals about groups and societies can 

be quite surprising. For example, a major TAA project 

conducted for the U.S. Central Command at first sight 

appeared to support the notion that in Afghanistan 

the Taliban oppose education.31 In fact, it showed that 

while some of the Taliban may, indeed, oppose education, this notion was actually too broad a generalization. In South Waziristan, for example, there were 

more schools under the Taliban than there are now after their removal. The TAA research revealed that the 

perception of Taliban opposition to education was the 

result not of religious zealotry, but actually of something far more common in every society, including the 
22

West; have/have not rivalry between different socioeconomic groups. Thus, if the result had been seeking 

to influence the local population against the Taliban 

by highlighting this as an endemic religious issue, 

the whole influence campaign would have failed because it was based upon a false premise. Similarly, the 

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, home of the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, has a reputation, in certain 

sections of the Western media at least, of being ultraconservative. Women wear the veil and may not drive 

cars, and all other religions are banned. The country’s 

justice code is infamously strict, with thieves having 

limbs amputated and adulterers being stoned. As a 

result, it is sometimes therefore assumed that Islam 

will be a dominant influence on young adult male behavior. Islam is important, yes. But TAA shows that 

it is simply not as important a behavioral trigger for 

young men as privacy from their parents, soccer, or 

nationalism. So an influence campaign aimed at this 

audience, grounded in Islamic references or context, 

might be less successful than one grounded in the fortunes of, say, the Manchester United Football Club. 

Another common presumption is that, in Afghanistan, the tribe is the defining feature. This, too, is 

misleading. Despite the importance of tribes, empirical TAA data reveals that it is regions and land (and 

the incomes and status associated with them) that are 

considered to be much more important. So influence 

campaigns vested in tribal culture may well resonate, 

but may be less successful than ones focused on geography and land usage. Any reader unfamiliar with 

Afghanistan can consult a narrative of crossing the 

country alone on foot by British Member of Parliament Rory Stewart. In his book, The Places In Between, 

he describes how his guides refused to accompany 
23

him to the next village or valley, or beyond the next 

mountain, because it was someone else’s territory. 

TAA, when undertaken properly, is an extremely complex process, and often offers up completely 

counterintuitive findings. For example, between 1997 

and 2000, there were huge increases in HIV transmission throughout the Caribbean. International funding 

was secured for a large public information campaign 

urging men to wear condoms. Yet, the slightly counterintuitive nature of a later TAA revealed that, in fact, 

men were simply not motivated to wear condoms at 

all—to do so was regarded by the target audience as 

a slur on their masculinity, and, in some cases, they 

believed that it would send a message that they were 

already diseased and therefore their chances of enjoying sexual relations would be much reduced. Thus the 

original target audience of young men was not actually the key audience at all—instead, the TAA revealed 

that young afro-Caribbean women were very worried 

about pregnancy, single-motherhood, and disease. 

Therefore, instead of an information campaign targeting men, what was needed was an unwanted pregnancy campaign targeted at women, as this would 

achieve the behavior change and arrest the HIV transmission. The campaign succeeded in introducing 

the use of condoms and significantly reducing HIV 

transmission rates. TAA, therefore, aims to construct 

a robust profile of the audience and how it can be influenced by an appropriately conceived and deployed 

message campaign. One key feature of this approach 

is that messages are developed in a bottom-up fashion, with them being constructed from a process of 

measurement and research, and subsequently derived 

from reliable knowledge of the audience. This is at 

odds with the current way that the military tradition-
24

ally conducts its business, where themes and messaging are crafted centrally and distributed downwards 

to theatre troops. Political messages from Washington and other capitals are often a diluted and distant 

memory by the time they reach the tactical level, and 

they may actually have no relevance at ground level 

anyway. 

Take the USAID program mentioned earlier—here 

the intent is to publicize the presence of USAID without any reference to the audience. At no stage does the 

invitation to tender invite research into the audience, it 

is entirely a “Push” function and, indeed, the tender—

no doubt issued from Washington—is highly prescriptive. The contractor is to consider running events 

at community youth centers highlighting USAID’s 

youth related activities; Ramadan-related community 

events; sponsorship of International Youth Day with 

extensive media and social media coverage; university workshops; Social Services Day in rural areas; Job 

fairs at universities; and events involving youth with 

special needs. The contractor will: develop numerous 

outreach materials, including talking points, scene setters, press releases, online materials, photos and short 

videos, as well as print materials, such as calendar and 

brochures. Scene setters, press releases, and other materials must conform to USAID/Pakistan’s formatting 

standards and USAID’s Branding and Marking guidelines. USAID/Pakistan produces and implements 

activities based on a mission-wide monthly events 

calendar. But there is no mention that the contractor 

will research the audience and determine what might 

actually be the best way to reduce hostile behavior. 

Instead, the pathway is fairly tightly articulated. 
25

It should be clear why the TAA approach is far 

more effective than simple marketing approaches, or 

indeed even cultural understanding. There exists no 

universal model of communication applicable to all 

groups and cultures. All communication efforts must 

be tailored to the local dynamics and with respect to 

the behaviors one is seeking to change. Because audiences are multifaceted and cannot be grouped as 

a population, influencing the differing component 

groups of a society requires precisely targeted methods and approaches: One message—no matter how 

culturally relevant—does not fit all. Working out 

who to influence, why, how, when, and whether it 

is possible constitutes the first steps of TAA. Often, 

it will be necessary to influence one group to influence another. Above all else, the process of influence 

is not necessarily to make a particular group like “us” 

or “our” ideas—although this is always an extra bonus. It should be obvious, but as can be seen by the 

September 2014 tender—it is not.

There are some further issues with TAA that merit 

consideration. If we think of TAA as the process of 

identifying the “right” audience, we must also be 

mindful that there are other audiences also present. 

We can think of them in four distinct spheres: the target audience; a group who may react positively to the 

messaging applied to the target; a group who may react negatively to the messaging applied to the target; 

and a group who will be ambivalent and who might 

even be best left alone. 

TAA IN ACTION

In the UK, at least, there has been a gradual realization that TAA is a key component in future operations. To try and understand TAA capabilities better, 
26

this monograph’s author defined for the UK MoD 

three tiers of TAA capability. Tier 3 TAA is the least 

detailed TAA and is almost exclusively derived from 

secondary research. For example, this is typically remote, open source analysis of target groups, very often carried out in the language of the analyst rather 

than in that of the target. For example, this may be an 

Internet based research project on a specific group—

Alawites in Syria, or Kurds in Iraq. Invariably, it will 

try to find third party studies, perhaps derived from 

academic or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 

and aggregate the information for military usage. This 

is usually open source, but it could also involve classified intelligence. This author explains the output of 

Tier 3 TAA as “assumed information.” 

Tier 2 TAA is any primary research involving actual contact with the audiences of interest but, critically, 

it does not follow a specific scientifically verified deductive methodology. It may be conducted in-country 

or remotely, and is largely attitudinally based. The 

output of Tier 2 TAA is information recorded from interactions with target audiences. An example of Tier 

2 TAA is a report from a patrol or a shura, where soldiers ask locals what they think is going on and what 

actions might positively influence attitudes and behaviors. A refined variation might be a cultural advisor on patrol. This type of TAA may with time become 

quite detailed. It provides another layer of data over 

and above that of Tier 3. 

By far the most useful TAA, however, is Tier 1. 

This is a multisource, scientifically verified, diagnostic methodology undertaken in-country and in the 

local language used to identify specific motivations 

for behavior. The output of Tier 1 TAA is information 

deduced from methodically gathered data, and tested 
27

against a scientifically derived hypothesis. To illustrate this, Figure 3, taken from an actual case study 

undertaken by the UK Government in 2013, shows the 

behavioral profiles of a specific target group—young 

unmarried males—in the target country. In essence, it 

is a simple graphical representation of the key components that will influence a target group’s behavior. 

They are derived from a broader set of research parameters shown in Figure 4, and it is of note that of 29 

different components that are researched and evaluated to create the behavioral profile grid, only one looks 

at current perceptions and attitudes (which forms the 

bulk of most other non-TAA derived communication 

programs).
28

Figure 3. The behavioral Parameter Scale for the

Target Audience of Young Unmarried Males.
29

Figure 4. Overview of Research Sets for 

the Creation of Behavioral Profiles.

A detailed examination of each of these criteria is 

beyond the scope of this monograph, but a cursory 

examination of just two is illustrative as it shows the 

depth of research that is required to make detailed 

strategy recommendations. The two examples are Locus of Control and Source Credibility—the former an 

internal psychological attribute the latter a key determinate in reaching an audience with a message.

Locus of Control. 

A Target audience’s locus of control represents 

that audience’s view of what determines the course 

of future events. A key distinction that must be de-
30

termined are those groups who can be characterized 

by an external locus of control, for whom control over 

events is believed to be external to them, and those 

characterized by an internal locus of control, who believe that control of external events is located in one’s 

own actions. A number of tests exist to measure locus 

of control.32 A number of revelations flow from the 

finding that a given audience is characterized by, for 

example, an external locus of control. Such an audience places a lower value on incoming information, 

because such information is believed to have little effect on external events. An audience with an external 

locus of control is less inclined to take action, because 

in their worldview, doing so will have little influence 

on how matters will play out. By contrast, an audience with an internal locus of control is inclined to 

take stock of a situation and assess how a different 

course of action might produce more desirable results. 

A willingness to await delayed gratification is associated with an internal locus of control, as are a tendency to resist coercion and a proclivity to take risks. 

An extreme finding for a target audience’s locus of 

control is a particularly consequential result to emerge 

from audience analysis, and one that can play a major, 

even definitive role in the construction of an effective 

strategic communication campaign. Assessing a target 

audience’s locus of control is essential to understanding what strategic communication has the capacity 

to accomplish vis-à-vis that audience, as an external 

locus suggests that a revision of behavior is unlikely 

whereas an internal locus indicates greater potential. 

Moreover, determining an audience’s locus of control 

can enable the crafting of messages that properly, effectively, and convincingly assign causes of past occurrences and suggest potential reasons for future 
31

developments. For example, historically, the Nigerian 

elections have been notoriously corrupt, with blatant 

fraudulent practices being witnessed by international 

observers and the media. A research project of the 

electorate to establish under what conditions the public might rise up against the government if fraudulent 

practices were observed actually revealed that there 

were almost none—because their locus of control was 

particularly low.

Source Credibility. 

This is a measure of the trustworthiness of a particular source (or origin) in the eyes of the relevant target 

audience. Just as messages can have differing receptions and impacts depending on the channels through 

which they are broadcast, so too can messages differ 

in their influence depending on the sources by which 

they are sent. The relative credibility of various sources within a given target audience can be measured 

through questionnaire and as a complement to such 

quantitative methods, surveys and focus groups can 

offer qualitative data for understanding the credibility 

of a particular source in the eyes of the target audience. The credibility of a particular country as a source 

for communications can differ over time, in different 

places, and among different age groups. Moreover, the 

country’s credibility can differ depending on the topic 

or issue being addressed by a strategic communication 

campaign. It is not enough for a message to reach its 

audience; that message must be accepted by, and thus 

influence the behavior of, the target audience. Hence, 

the source associated with the message is crucial; and, 

in particular, the credibility of that source will have 

major consequences on the extent to which the mes-
32

sage is, in fact, accepted. Psychological experiments 

have underscored the importance of considering 

source credibility in crafting strategic communication. 

Psychologists, beginning with Carl Hovland, Irving 

Janis, and Harold Kelley, have noted that messages 

likely to appear sensible to an audience are generally 

accepted regardless of the source. For messages whose 

content is more questionable, however—as is the case 

with most strategic communication—only those messages emerging from a source considered credible will 

be accepted by the audience. Experiments have shown 

that, because of the enormous exposure to commercial 

marketing campaigns, even less developed communities are aware that a “commercial” or “advertisement” 

is an appeal by an interested party (the communicator) 

to try to influence your attitude or behavior. Therefore, appeals without any apparent source are deeply 

distrusted. Many of the “grey” programs that were 

run in Iraq had no identifiable source and therefore 

lacked credibility with their intended audiences.

Having profiled the audience’s behavioral characteristics a possible strategy is modeled against the 

profile—in this instance, the strategy is some form of 

national duty. In Figure 5, it can be seen by the preponderance of green lights that this is a good strategy 

and would work with the target group for the desired 

behavioral outcome.

However, in the instance that follows, which is the 

giving of financial aid, it can be seen that the profile 

is populated by red lights, indicating that this is not a 

good strategy to be employed, see Figure 6.
33

Figure 5. The Behavioral Parameter Scale Populated for the Impact of National Duty 

on the Target Audience of Young Unmarried Males.
34

Figure 6. The Behavioral Parameter Scale Populated for the Impact of Financial Aid 

on the Target Audience of Young Unmarried Males.
35

As was illustrated with various examples previously, TAA has been used very successfully in a series 

of applications and geographical regions. Increasingly, however, a new field of research has opened up 

that superficially appears to have potential to compete 

with TAA as an indicator of future behavior—social 

media analysis.

DOWN THE SOCIAL MEDIA RABBIT HOLE? 

The wave of protests that swept the Arab world 

between 2010 and 2014, and which in many instances 

have still to reach their conclusion, if nothing else seem 

to have become the benchmark by which the impact 

of social media is assessed, at least as it pertains to 

the study of international relations and conflict. Social 

media was a key facilitator for political change; the 

Project on Information Technology and Political Islam 

found that in the week before Hosni Mubarak stepped 

down, the number of tweets in Egypt and around the 

world about the political developments in the country 

jumped from 2,300 a day to 230,000 a day.33 Of course, 

how many of those emanated from within Egypt is a 

different issue. The social media intelligence firm Sysomos analyzed 52 million Twitter users during the 

revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, and concluded that only 14,642, or 0.027 percent, positively 

identified their location as Egypt, Yemen, or Tunisia.34

This figure is low even when allowance is made for 

the fact that only a small proportion of Twitter’s approximately 500 million active users and their 72 billion tweets (figures from 2013) opt-in to allow Twitter 

to broadcast their location with every tweet.

Even if location is disabled, it is possible to analyze 

the metadata associated with each tweet, such as time 
36

zone and language, to search for specific trends. Data 

generated by Twitter users and available through 

Twitter’s application programming interface by one 

study found that during the 1-week sampling period, 

roughly 20 percent of the tweets collected showed the 

user’s location to an accuracy of street level or better.35

This is important to remember because in the last few 

years, the analysis and interpretation of social media 

has become a growth industry, with numerous companies now suggesting their algorithms will allow 

accurate prediction of all type of behaviors—from 

purchasing inclinations to propensity to cause violent 

rebellion. This commercial certainty is not mirrored in 

academic study. “It is unclear if and how social data 

can predict behavior, and whether such predictions 

are more accurate than those arising from current 

marketing practices,” assert Sharad Goel and Daniel 

Goldstein in their study, Predicting Individual Behavior 

with Social Networks.

36 The predictive value of social 

media has “yet to be established in any meaningful 

way,” according to psychologist, Dr. Jane Adams.37

Haile Owusu, director of research at SocialFlow, 

studied social media data following the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Michael 

Zimmerman in Sanford, FL, in February 2012. He 

concluded that there was: 

a violent tone to a lot of what is written about Trayvon 

and Zimmerman that hasn’t precipitated anything. . . .

Saying is very different from doing, and social media 

is often used as a place to vent, and nothing more. 

Twitter cannot predict if or when violent words will 

become violent actions.38

In their study, Real-World Behavior Analysis through 

a Social Media Lens, Mohammad-Ali Abbasi, Sun-Ki 
37

Chaiz, Huan Liuy, and Kiran Sagooz suggest that it 

is far easier to spot retrospective patterns and clues in 

Social Media when you know what you are looking 

for: 

Despite years of trying, no one’s quite figured out how 

to harness the monster of publicly available online 

data to predict the future. It’s a formidable task—

Twitter alone sees some 58 million tweets every day. 

Using social media to predict violent social uprisings 

is almost impossible.39

Some academics remain nonetheless optimistic. 

Nathan Kallus writes that: 

With public information becoming widely accessible 

and shared on today’s web, greater insights are possible into crowd actions by citizens and non-state actors such as large protests and cyber activism. . . . The 

study validates the common intuition that data on social media (beyond mainstream news sources) are able 

to predict major events.40

Sitaram Asur researched: 

chatter from Twitter.com to forecast box-office revenues for movies. We show that a simple model built 

from the rate at which tweets are created about particular topics can outperform market-based predictors.41

The key question is whether social media analysis provides data that was previously unobtainable. 

Professor Kalev Leetaru of the University of Illinois, 

Urbana–Champaign, IL, suggests that: 

Despite being hailed as a social media revolution, 

monitoring the tone of only mainstream media around 

the world would have been enough to suggest the 
38

potential for unrest in Egypt. While such a surge in 

negativity about Egypt would not have automatically indicated that the government would be overthrown, it would at the very least have suggested to 

policy-makers and intelligence analysts that there was 

increased potential for unrest.42

Lawrence Pintak, author of The New Arab Journalist, pointed out on CNN that, despite the speed with 

which the Mubarak regime fell, bloggers and digital 

activists had been working toward reform under violent repression in the Middle East for years. “This is a 

digital revolution that has been happening for quite a 

while,” he noted.43 The director of the Council of the 

Advancement of Arab British Understanding wrote 

on Al-Rabiya’s website: 

ISIS and like-minded groups are populated by those 

born in the Internet age, totally at ease with advanced 

programming and ICT skills. Their videos, their newsletters and use of social media are slick and professional. The trouble is that the real reasons ISIS and 

other extremist groups have been successful is only 

partially due to social media and far more to do with 

international and regional policy failures. Just as there 

was no Twitter revolution in Iran and no Facebook 

revolution in Egypt, ISIS is not merely a social media 

phenomenon. The real questions are why does ISIS attract followers and why does the West and its allies 

have such a poor record in countering this?44

This author would suggest that the answer to the 

last question is that because our collective communication campaigns lack detailed understanding at their 

inception.

Where there is perhaps more agreement is that 

social media acted as an accelerator to change. Eira 

Martens, a research associate with the Deutsche Welle 
39

Academy, Bonn, Germany, showed that, in addition 

to helping organize protests, social media—in particular shared photos and videos—allowed participants 

to form a collective identity. This increased a sense of 

solidarity and helped lower a “fear threshold” that 

could otherwise have prevented people from taking 

to the streets.45

But the simple fact is that social media like Facebook and Twitter did not cause revolutions; the revolutions were caused by people, and for a variety of 

reasons. But social media did speed up the process by 

informing and by helping to organize the revolutionaries, and by transmitting their message to the world 

and galvanizing international support. A 2012 study 

undertaken by Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, CA; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Washington, DC; and SCL Ltd., Washington, DC; determined that dispersion of discussion 

across European and Middle Eastern blog network 

communities did provide early clues of large mobilization events, but not of specific behaviors.46 Sascha 

Meinrath, director of the New America Foundation’s 

Open Technology Initiative, wrote that: 

Social media have become the pamphlets of the 21st 

century, a way that people who are frustrated with the 

status quo can organize themselves and coordinate 

protest, and in the case of Egypt, revolution.47

Rafat Ali, a social media expert and founder of 

PaidContent,48 said Facebook and Twitter played different roles in the uprising. “Facebook helped to organize the activists inside the country,” he said: 

while Twitter functioned to help get the message out 

to the broader world. Facebook acts like an accelerant to conditions which already exist in the country. 
40

Twitter and YouTube serve as amplification for what’s 

happening on the ground. And they directly affect 

Western media coverage.49

What is clear is that, even in the era of big data, it is 

currently impossible to rely absolutely on social media 

analysis as a strategic tool for predicting latent events. 

For information on current events already occurring, 

social media remain a gold mine—but in a truly global 

information space, it will continue to be very difficult 

to determine what is relevant and what is not. Thus 

despite the “sexiness” of social media, strategic TAA 

remains the best and quickest way to determine latent 

behaviors.

HOW WOULD IT WORK?

Clearly, it would be impossible to TAA every 

group of interest in every country of the world. Quite 

aside from the vast expense, it would be largely nugatory work. Yet, in the West, there are around 10 to 15 

countries that will endure as places of great interest—

possibly because they are regarded as threats (past 

or present) to international security and stability; 

perhaps because they are emerging from conflict and 

their futures, and their future leaders, have not yet 

emerged; some because they are at risk of insurgency or internal corruption; and some nations because 

they are likely to fall into conflict and the West may 

be pulled into peacekeeping or stabilizing missions. 

The maintenance of an ongoing TAA research program on each country would be comparatively cheap, 

require a small footprint, could be covert or overt—

i.e., it could be done with the full agreement of the 

host country—and could be continuously monitoring 
41

the evolution of popular groups and their behaviors. 

More importantly, as we have seen from the case study 

just discussed, it would allow desk officers for specific 

countries to run policy options and strategies against 

real and empirically derived data, providing political 

leadership with far more detained understanding of 

the likely consequence of their policy decisions.

Would it cost money? Of course, deploying research teams and crunching data to provide meaningful strategy recommendations is never going to be 

cheap. In 2013 when the UK MoD ran its trial, it was 

estimated that a 3-year TAA program in three countries could be procured for around £2 million; this 

might equate to less than £10 million for 10 nations 

for 3 years. This seems like a lot until you compare it 

with other defense expense. The UK spent £2 million 

for a public relations company to run communications 

for the Geneva II conference on 2014; one single Abrahams M1A2 tank costs over $6 million50; while the cost 

of deploying a single soldier to Afghanistan, for 1 year 

is assessed by Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of 

Government as being $1 million—the conflict having 

cost the U.S. Government the equivalent of $75,000 for 

every U.S. household.51

What is perhaps more troublesome is where this 

capability would reside in government. Here you 

have a very serious structural problem, addressed in 

following paragraphs, that TAA reveals whole of government solutions, and governments tend to work, 

despite efforts to the contrary, in departmental stove 

pipes. Thus, in the UK, the sense was that the capability needed to be either in the Cabinet Office, as the 

political center of gravity for government or in the 

National Security Council Secretariat. 
42

WHY GOVERNMENTS WILL NOT INVEST IN 

STRATEGIC TAA 

Professor Julian Lindley-French is Distinguished 

Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for National 

Security Studies in Washington, DC, and is a former 

member of the UK Chief of Defence Staff’s advisory 

panel. He is deeply pessimistic about the future: 

War is coming, big war. Not here, not now but some 

time, some place this century it is coming. The rapid shift in the military balance of power away from 

the democracies, arms races, climate change and the 

coming dislocation of societies, the dangerous proliferation of dangerous technologies, demographic pressures, competition for energy, food and water and the 

hollowing out of states. All the necessary ingredients 

for big war exist, driven daily by the growing systemic 

frictions apparent in the world.52

If we can learn one single lesson from Afghanistan, it is that conventional wisdom and a “can do” 

attitude were simply not enough to prevail. The adaption and innovation promised by senior officers now 

needs to be demonstrated and funded. Since the root 

cause of all conflict is people, understanding people 

better must be the starting point if we are to prevail 

in Lindley-French’s “big war.” Yet, there are significant obstacles in the way. Professor of History at the 

University of Chicago and President of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs William Polk 

recently wrote in The Atlantic Journal that: 

As we have seen in each of our recent crises—Somalia, Mali, Libya, Syria, Iraq, the Ukraine and Iran—

’practical’ men of affairs want quick answers: they say 

in effect, ‘don’t bother us with talk about how we got 
43

here; this is where we are; so what do we do now?’ 

The result, predictably, is a sort of nervous tick in the 

body politic: we lurch from one emergency to the next 

in an unending sequence. This is not new. We all have 

heard the quip: ‘ready, fire, aim.’ In fact those words 

were not just a joke. For centuries after infantry soldiers were given the rifle, they were ordered not to 

take the time to aim; rather, they were instructed just 

to point in the general direction of the enemy and fire. 

Their commanders believed that it was the mass impact, the ‘broadside,’ that won the day. Our leaders 

still believe it. They think that our ‘shock and awe,’ 

our marvelous technology measured in stealth bombers, drones, all-knowing intelligence, our massed and 

highly mobile troops and our money constitute a devastating broadside. All we have to do is to point in the 

right direction and shoot. So we shoot and then shoot 

again and again. We win each battle, but the battles 

keep happening. And to our chagrin, we don’t seem to 

be winning the wars. By almost any criterion, we are 

less ‘victorious’ today than half a century ago.53

Iain Richardson is a former Royal Navy Captain 

with a distinguished career in military intelligence, 

and former Deputy Head of the now defunct UK Defence Academy’s Advanced Research and Assessment 

Group. Based on his extensive experience of bringing 

future threats and problems to the notice of senior 

leadership, Richardson summed up the strategy deficit 

in a conversation with this monograph’s author thus: 

“Our leaders are far too busy being busy to be anything other than busy.”54 In effect, process rather than 

strategy is the key deliverable in many departments of 

government throughout the Euro-Atlantic community, and, in keeping the process alive, strategic thinking 

inevitably takes second place. The result is that policy 

is almost exclusively reactive, as the author saw this 
44

first hand in nearly 2 years working on multinational 

problems while serving in the UK MoD. The pattern is 

repeated over and over; little or no resource is applied 

to understanding up-stream population-based threats, 

and, as issues develop in a particular region, staff who 

invariably have little understanding or knowledge of 

the country concerned are sucked into crisis teams to 

“firefight” issues. Those teams become under intense 

political and public pressure to deliver; resources are 

suddenly made available; the lure of public relations 

and marketing based campaigns which promise quick 

delivery becomes irresistible, and the more slow and 

considered process of researching and understanding 

is subjugated to the need to demonstrate delivery—

measures of performance, rather than MOE.

During a trial of the strategic TAA approach described herein, few senior people had time or inclination to attend briefs, and, for those that did, while all 

declared that the data was astounding, no one was 

prepared to allocate increasing scarce financial resource on “nice to have” research in countries where 

there may or may not be a problem. In short, governments play the odds and when the bet fails, there is a 

substantial price to pay.

A third reason why strategic TAA seems likely not 

to be part of future government tools is that TAA is 

unconventional. It is like intelligence, but it is more 

than intelligence; it is like social science research, but 

it is more than social science research; it is like strategic communication, but strategic communication is 

but a part. It is related to defense, but also cuts across 

international relations and international development. All of this means that it does not fall naturally 

into one section or department of government, and 

thus officials need to take risk outside of their com-
45

fort zones. In some ways the current status of strategic 

TAA resembles the early development of Whittle’s jet 

engine—both for the revolutionary effect that mainstream adoption would have on conflict, and for its 

tortuous journey towards acceptance.

As illustrated by the whack-a-mole example provided earlier, the emergence of new threats over the 

last few years has been relentless and wearying, but 

strategic TAA holds a key to pre-empting future problems in order to avoid costly and painful military 

engagements. 

The doctrine of ‘exit strategy’ fundamentally misunderstands the nature of war and the nature of historical action. The knowledge of the end is not given to us 

at the beginning.55

 Leon Wieseltier, 

 American Philosopher and Writer

. . . but with Strategic TAA, it could be.56

 Dr. Steve Tatham

ENDNOTES

1. “UK Military ‘Made Wrong Calculations’ on Afghanistan,” 

BBC News, November 23, 2014, available from www.bbc.co.uk/

news/uk-29714738, accessed May 3, 2015.

2. “Barak Obama: U.S. ‘Underestimated’ ISIS, Overestimated 

Iraqi Army,” NBC News September 28, 2014, available from www.

nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/obama-u-s-underestimated-isis-overestimated-iraqi-army-n213506, accessed May 3, 2015.

3. Decade of War, Vol. I, “Enduring Lessons from the Past Decade of Operations,” June 15, 2012, available from cgsc.contentdm.

oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p4013coll11/id/2035.
46

4. “A Policy of Evasion and Deception,” The Washington 

Post, February 5, 2003.

5. Frank Whittle, a British Royal Air Force officer, took a design for a jet engine to the British Government in 1929, but was 

turned down for funding on the grounds of impracticality. In 1930, 

he patented the design himself, but, having sunk all his funds into 

research, he could not afford the fee when the patent renewal was 

due in 1934. He again applied for government sponsorship, which 

again was declined. He raised £2,000 in private finance. In 1937, 

after 8 years of further research and development, he again offered the project to the British Government, which again declined 

to assist him. It was only in 1939 that a single government official, 

at risk to his career and reputation, backed Whittle and his project 

for funding. The result was that British jet aircraft only entered 

operational service at the end, not the beginning, of World War II. 

6. Pakistan Outreach and Communication Activity Solicitation Number, REQ-391-14-000128.

7. Ibid. 

8. “Pakistani Public Opinion Ever More Critical of U.S.,” 

Pew Global Poll, June 27, 2012, available from www.pewglobal.

org/2012/06/27/pakistani-public-opinion-ever-more-critical-of-u-s/.

9. Ibid.

10. Pakistan Outreach and Communication Activity Solicitation Number, REQ-391-14-000128.

11. Ibid.

12. “World Wide Caution Notice, Washington, DC: DoS, 

available from travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/alertswarnings/worldwide-caution.html, accessed January 13, 2015.

13. FCO Foreign Travel Advice, Pakistan, available from 

https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/pakistan, accessed January 

13, 2015.
47

14. “U.S. Issues Warning over Pakistan Threat,” USA Today, 

August 9, 2013, available from www.usatoday.com/story/news/

nation/2013/08/08/us-lahore-pakistan-evacuation/2634337/.

15. For the previous quote and this information, see “The 

12 Most Dangerous Countries for Americans to Visit,” The 

Examiner, available from www.examiner.com/article/the-dangerousdozen-the-12-most-dangerous-countries-for-americans-to-visit, accessed December 14, 2015. 

16. “Danger and Separation from Families Changing 

Job of U.S. Diplomats,” Reuters, May 19, 2013, available 

from www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/19/us-usa-diplomatsidUSBRE94I01G20130519, accessed May 6, 2015.

17. “The State of Terrorism in Pakistan,” The Diplomat September 8, 2014, available from thediplomat.com/2014/09/the-state-ofterrorism-in-pakistan/, accessed June 6, 2015.

18. Can Foreign Aid Help Stop Terrorism? Washington, DC: 

The Brookings Institution, Summer 2002, available from www.

brookings.edu/research/articles/2002/06/summer-terrorism-graham, 

accessed June 3, 2015.

19. Bu Savun and John Hays, “Foreign Aid as a Counterterrorism Tool: Aid Delivery Channels, State Capacity, and NGOs, 

APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper, available from ssrn.com/abstract=1900690, accessed June 3, 2015.

20. S. Sharma, Z. Davis, and M. Findley, Deadly Gift? The Effect 

of Foreign Aid on Terrorism, Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 

Department of Political Science, February 12, 2009.

21. Steven Tatham, U.S. Governmental Information Operations 

and Strategic Communications: A Discredited Tool Or User Failure? 

Implications For Future Conflict, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, available from www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1182.

22. C. Shannon and W. Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of 

Communication, Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois 

Press, 1998.
48

23. N. Luhmann, Social Systems, Stanford, CA: Stanford 

University Press, 1995.

24. Ibid.

25. “General Petraeus on Leadership (His Views on Truth),” 

Fortune Magazine, March 5, 2010, available from archive.fortune.

com/2010/03/04/news/companies/petraeus_leadership.fortune/index.

htm, accessed June 3, 2015.

26. See www.englishblog.com/2013/01/cartoon-wac-a-terrorist-.

html#.VW75aULRxl.

27. In 2010, the Royal College of Defence Studies in London, 

UK, hosted a private seminar on behalf of then Chief of Defence 

Staff General Sir David Richards. At that event, to which numerous commercial companies had been invited, one contractor 

stood up and publicly stated that the loudest voice would always 

win through, and that repetition of message was utterly key to 

success. This author was stunned since no mention was made of 

the audiences—as if they did not matter and had no hand in the 

outcome.

28. Unclassified quote taken from 52 Bde, Commanders Post 

Operation Tour Report, April 2008.

29. Zoo Research Guidelines: “Behavioural Profiling,” available from winghamwildlifepark.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/

Behavioural-profiling-guidelines.pdf.

30. “AVIATION SECURITY: Efforts to Validate TSA’s Passenger Screening Behavior Detection Program Underway, but 

Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Validation and Address Operational Challenges,” GAO Report 10-763, Washington, DC: U.S. 

Government Accountability Office, May 2010. 

31. “Strategic Multi-layer Assessment for a Rich Contextual 

Understanding of PAKAF—Provisional.”

32. These include Rotter’s 23-item forced scale, the Crandall Intellectual Ascription of Responsibility Scale, the NowickiStrickland Scale, and the Duttweiler Internal Control Index.
49

33. Philip Howard et al., “Opening Closed Regimes: What 

Was the Role of Social Media During the Arab Spring?” available 

from philhoward.org/?p=789.

34. “How Egyptians Used Twitter during the January Crisis,” 

available from mashable.com/2011/01/31/egypt-twitter-infographic/, 

accessed June 3, 2015.

35. “Twitter and Privacy: Nearly One-in-Five Tweets Divulge 

User Location through Geo-Tagging or Metadata,” available 

from https://pressroom.usc.edu/twitter-and-privacy-nearly-one-in-fivetweets-divulge-user-location-through-geotagging-or-metadata/.

36. S. Goel and D. Goldstein, “Predicting Individual Behavior with Social Networks,” Marketing Science, Vol. 33, No. 1, 2014, 

pp. 82-93.

37. “Can Social Media Predict Behavior?” Huffington Post, July 

16, 2013, available from www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-adams/cansocial-media-predict-_b_3601192.html, accessed June 6, 2015.

38. Why We Can’t Use Social Media to Predict Riots,” available from www.fastcompany.com/3014283/the-code-war/why-wecant-use-social-media-to-predict-riots, accessed June 8, 2015.

39. Mohammad-Ali Abbasiy, Sun-Ki Chaiz, Huan Liuy, and 

Kiran Sagooz, “Real-World Behavior Analysis through a Social 

Media Lens,” 2012, available from www.public.asu.edu/~huanliu/

papers/SBP12Lens.pdf

40. Nathan Kallus, “Predicting Crowd Behavior with Big 

Public Data,” 2014.

41. Sitaram Asur and Bernardo A. Huberman, “Predicting 

the Future With Social Media,” available from www.hpl.hp.com/

research/scl/papers/socialmedia/socialmedia.pdf, accessed May 6, 2015.

42. Professor Kalev Leetaru, Culturomics 2.0: Forecasting LargeScale Human Behavior Using Global News Media Tone in Time and 

Space, Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois, 2011.
50

43. “Social Media Sparked, Accelerated Egypt’s Revolutionary,” Wired Magazine, November 2, 2011, available from www.

wired.com/2011/02/egypts-revolutionary-fire/.

44. “Social Media Did Not Create ISIS, Nor Did It Spark Revolutions,” November 5, 2014, available from english.alarabiya.net/en/

views/news/middle-east/2014/11/05/Social-media-did-not-create-ISISnor-did-it-spark-revolutions-.html, accessed June 3, 2015.

45. “Social Media Use Evolving in Egypt,” July 4, 2014, available from www.dw.de/social-media-use-evolving-in-egypt/a-16930251, 

accessed May 3, 2015.

46. Social Quorum Heuristic: Feasibility Study DARPA and SCL, 

October 23, 2012.

47. “Social Media Sparked.”

48. “Paidcontent” was an online media hub that covered 

news, information, and analysis of the business of digital media. 

It was founded in 2002 by journalist Rafat Ali.

49. “Social Media Sparked.”

50. “Abrams M1A2,” Defense Industry Daily, February 4, 2014, 

available from www.defenseindustrydaily.com/digital-abrams-them1a2-sep-program-updated-02834/.

51. The Most Expensive War in World History: Costs of Iraq, Afghanistan Wars Could Rise to $6 Trillion, available from www.globalresearch.ca/the-most-expensive-war-in-world-history-costs-of-iraqafghanistan-wars-could-rise-to-6-trillion/5329432, accessed February 

17, 2015.

52. Professor Julian Lindley-French, Senior Fellow, Institute of Statecraft and Director, Europa Analytical, Private email 

distribution, April 4, 2014.

53. William R. Polk, “American Grand Strategy for Iraq, Syria, and the Region,” The Atlantic, June 23, 2014, available from 

www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/william-r-polk-ongrand-strategy-iraq-and-syria/373221/, accessed May 3, 2015.
51

54. Author’s private diary, December 2009.

55. “Force without Force,” The New Republic, April 23, 

1999, available from www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/forcewithout-force.

56. Author’s quote.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General William E. Rapp

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

and

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE PRESS

Director

Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

Director of Research

Dr. Steven K. Metz

Author

Dr. Steve Tatham

Editor for Production

Dr. James G. Pierce

Publications Assistant

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Mrs. Jennifer E. Nevil