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The NATO RTO (now the NATO STO - Science & Technology Organization) held a two-day workshop on Social Media: Risks and Opportunities in Military Applications in April 2012.The majority of the papers presented and the Techical Evaluation Report can be freely downloaded from http://www.cso.nato.int/abstracts.aspx(enter "HFM-201" in the keywords and then hit search). I invite everybody to have a look.A brief summary of the technical evaluation report:The workshop was organized in the following sessions:Properties of Social MediaRelevance of Social MediaSession 1: Defining the ProblemSession 2: Examples and Implementation a Multi-National PerspectiveSession 3: Use within Military Applications and Case StudiesSession 4: Tools and Technologies for Social MediaSession 5 and 6: Social Media AnalysisRisks and Opportunities for Military ApplicationsThe identified keyrisks associated with social media included (but are not limited to):Deception: Intentional or unintentional misinformation by adversary or friendly forces leading to undesirable public and private understandings and/or actions.Damage: the employment of social media communications to distribute unfavorable information that undermines confidence in public institutions including the military (e.g., counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and counter-extremism).Destruction: Destruction of availability, confidentiality and integrity of information, undermining of social institutions, and/or undesirable human behaviors resulting in physical destruction.Additional risks include indiscreet information sharing, information overload, selection bias, overdependence on technology in non-technical terrain, rapid/uncontrollable global transmission of information, and strategic consequences of tactical communications.The following opportunities were investigated:Use of current social media platforms for core NATO functionsTimeliness, comprehensiveness, and qualityEconomical Local and minority population understandingEnhancement of classical military functionsProvide strategic warning and anticipationScience and technologyCross cultural understandingEnvironment agility and maneuverTransparency and privacyResearch GapsData collectionEvaluation (shared, validated, training and test data; common tasks)Social science validationMultimediaComputational sociolinguistics (e.g., Social media speak)Massive, real-time complex socio-cultural-behavioral data processing and modeling and simulationResiliencyRecommendationTo both prepare for the use of and employ social media applications among NATO forces the following is required:OrganizeStandardizeTrainEquipEmployAssessPierpaolo