Managing stakeholders opinions on social media by Ina Catrinescu

INTELLIGENCE 2.0 INA CATRINESCU

MANAGING STAKEHOLDERS’ OPINIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Image: © Yarche - Fotolia

INTELLIGENCE 2.0 MANAGING STAKEHOLDERS’ OPINIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA Ina Catrinescu

Intelligence 2.0: Managing Stakeholders’ Opinions on Social Media Executive International Master of Science in Corporate Communication (MCC) Erasmus University Rotterdam November, 2011

Although Social Media is currently an “en vogue” trend in business, little academic theory combining empirical research exists regarding the mechanisms of Social Media that can impact corporate reputations and help firms effectively manage stakeholder opinions online. This gap is not insignificant, for academia could help ground Social Media practices into substantiated theory, thereby giving firms a better understanding into the successful engagement practices with this channel. This thesis was aimed at making a contribution towards bridging that gap. Aside from the academic implications, the thesis also presents an equation for measuring Social Media engagement effectiveness and formulates recommendations on developing strategies to effectively manage stakeholders’ opinions online.

Supervisors:

Prof. Dr. C.B.M. van Riel Dr. M. van Halderen

CONTENTS 1

INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1

1.1

FOCUS OF THE THESIS ............................................................................... 1

1.2

OVERVIEW OF THE THESIS........................................................................ 2

1.3

INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES .......................................................................... 2

CASE STUDIES: WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ORGANISATIONS? ... 24

4.1

BUILDING BRAND AWARENESS & ATTRACTIVENESS ................................. 24

4.2

BUILDING TRANSPARENCY & TRUST ......................................................... 25 4.2.1

4.3

DEALING WITH TRANSPARENCY IN THE INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES FIELD .... 27

GATHERING INTELLIGENCE .................................................................... 28

RESEARCH QUESTION 1-A ...................................................................................30

RESEARCH METHOD ...................................................................................................... 7

2.1

QUALITATIVE METHOD ............................................................................ 7

2.2

QUANTITATIVE METHOD ......................................................................... 8

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ........................................................................................ 13

3.1

WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA? ....................................................................... 14

3.2

AGENDA-SETTING THEORY ...................................................................... 14

3.3

BRAND AWARENESS ................................................................................ 15

3.4

USES & GRATIFICATIONS THEORY............................................................ 16

3.5

TRUST..................................................................................................... 17

3.6

REPUTATION MANAGEMENT ................................................................... 18

3.7

THE SPIRAL OF SILENCE THEORY ............................................................. 19

3.8

TRANSPARENCY ..................................................................................... 20

3.9

CONCLUSION ......................................................................................... 23

DESK RESEARCH: HOW DO OTHER INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES ENGAGE SOCIAL MEDIA? 31

5.1

HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT ................................................................... 31

5.2

RESULTS ................................................................................................. 33

5.3

SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT EFFECTIVENESS ......................................... 35

RESEARCH QUESTION 1-B ...................................................................................36 RESEARCH QUESTION 1-C ...................................................................................38 6

CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 39

6.1

RECOMMENDATIONS ............................................................................. 40

6.2

RESEARCH LIMITATIONS ........................................................................ 47

6.3

FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS ............................................................ 47

FIGURES

Table 9: Overview of the theoretical framework ................................................ 13 Table 10: Overview of academic literature on the benefits of transparency .....21

Figure 2.1: FBI photobucket user added image Example 1 .................................. 11

Table 11: Overview of the benefits ....................................................................... 30

Figure 2.2: FBI photobucket user added image Example 2 ................................. 11

Table 12: Dataset for engagement efforts (four months) ................................... 33

Figure 3.1: Transparency....................................................................................... 23

Table 13: Dataset for sentiment (four months) .................................................. 34

Figure 5.1: Social Media Metrics .......................................................................... 31

Table 14: Top Keywords on Social Media ........................................................... 35

Figure 5.2: Overview of efforts and mentions..................................................... 33

Table 15: Interview protocol ................................................................................ 54

Figure 5.3: Efforts versus Mentions .....................................................................34

Table 16: FBI Vision, Mission & Values ............................................................... 54

Figure 5.4: Negative & Positive + Neutral mentions (27/05/2011-27/09/2011) ..34

Table 17: CIA Vision, Mission & Values .............................................................. 55

Figure 5.5: Effectiveness in function of engagement activity ............................36

Table 18: Interpol Vision, Mission & Values ....................................................... 55

Figure 5.6: Social Media engagement Strategies Matrix .................................... 37

Table 19: Europol Vision, Mission & Values ....................................................... 55

Figure 6.1: Social Media KPIs (adapted from Van Riel & Fombrun, 2007) .......43 Figure 6.2: Stages & steps of developing & executing a Social Media strategy 46

ANNEXES

Figure 6.3: Screenshot of the SQL database interface built for data mining .... 53

ANNEX 1: DATA MINING TOOLS ............................................................................. 53

Figure 6.4: Screenshot of “SocialMention” ......................................................... 53

ANNEX 2: INTERVIEW PROTOCOL.......................................................................... 54 ANNEX 3: VISION, MISSION & VALUES .................................................................. 54

TABLES Table 1: Overview of the thesis ............................................................................. 2 Table 2: Overview of research methods ............................................................... 7 Table 3: Overview of the level of engagement per Intelligence agency ............. 8 Table 4: FBI subset of manually assessed data .................................................... 11 Table 5: CIA subset of manually assessed data................................................... 12 Table 6: Interpol subset of manually assessed data ........................................... 12 Table 7: Europol subset of manually assessed data ............................................ 12 Table 8: Results..................................................................................................... 12

INTRODUCTION

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 FOCUS OF THE THESIS

Just a while back, Social Media seemed so new and awkward that it was

This thesis takes the above-described feeling of urgency as a starting point.

perceived more like a modern “child’s gadget”. This children’s gadget

The Social Media trends have led to practices such as stakeholders gaining

however, progressed from being just another way some businesses do

influence and power to impact organisational reputations online. These

marketing, to being the way we do marketing today. Everyone’s engaging and

developments could potentially pose a threat to Europol’s reputation and the

Intelligence agencies are not lagging behind. The FBI, Interpol and the CIA

fact that the agency is not active on Social Media further impedes it from

alike, have submerged themselves into this wave of hyper-connectedness.

being able to steer the opinions towards more positive ones when necessary.

This naturally makes the firms that are not engaging feel that they are being

A natural response of the organisation is therefore, to “control” these Social

left behind and that they might be missing out on the promise that this

Media developments by proactively engaging the channel, but would this

medium holds. Europol is one of those firms.

indeed be the solution? This thesis focuses on having an objective analysis of this matter and on answering Europol’s question by seeking to find the

Inside the organisation the feeling presides that Europol no longer has the

strategic benefits of engaging, as well as the lessons learned from the other

luxury of time on their side and that the question is not “whether or not”, but

agencies that are already active on Social Media. This research therefore

rather “how soon should Europol engage Social Media”. Some negative

addresses the following overall research question:

comments found on Social Media websites further led the organisation to fear

To what extent could Europol use Social Media to improve

that representation is done by others in negative ways and that the only way

stakeholder opinions on Social Media?

to mitigate this risk is by taking control, “Europol should take control of our presence,” (Information security Officer, Europol). Indeed, leaving the reputation of the organisation in the hands and at the mercy of the online

This overall question is broken down into three specific research questions. 1.

What are the strategic benefits of Social Media for

stakeholders is certainly not an option. But whether or not the opinions

organisations in terms of managing stakeholders’ opinions of

online are really as negative as it is internally perceived and whether “taking

the company on Social Media?

control of our presence” by engaging the Social Media is indeed the solution

manage these opinions?

for Europol, remains to be seen, objectively weighing various factors and is addressed by this research.

How do other intelligence agencies engage Social Media to

Would Europol’s participation in Social

Media

positively impact Social Media stakeholders’ opinions?

INTRODUCTION

1.2 OVERVIEW OF THE THESIS

my second and third research sub-questions by showing the effects of being active on Social Media channels for intelligence agencies, compared to not

The structure of this thesis is outlined in Table 1.1: Overview of the thesis. The research is divided into six chapters. Chapter I began with the introduction, where I discussed the focus of the thesis, aimed at evaluating whether or not

being active, such as in the case of Europol. Finally, in chapter VI, I conclude the findings of my study and formulate recommendations for Europol.

Europol should engage Social Media. Below, I finish this chapter with a short explanation of what intelligence agencies are, including a more specific

Table 1.1: Overview of the thesis

description of Europol - the organisation for which I am conducting this

Chap

Specific Research Question

Research Method

Research problem & definition of Intelligence Agencies

Content analyses & interviews

Research Method Theoretical framework

Strategic benefits of engaging in Social Media

Desk research

Benefits of Social Media

What are the benefits of Social Media for organisations?

Case studies, interviews & content analyses

Intelligence agencies’ Social Media practices Conclusion

How do other intelligence agencies engage Social Media to manage stakeholder opinions? Based on the above insights, what are the recommendations for Europol specifically in regards to Social Media participation?

Desk research & content analyses

research. 1

In chapter II I discuss the methods I used to conduct this research.

Chapter III describes existing literature, offering the reader a first insight

into the strategic benefits of engaging in Social Media, formulated on bases of a solid mass-media effects theoretical framework.

Chapter IV consists of three case studies, aimed at answering the first subquestion of my research: that is, before investigating whether or not Europol should engage Social Media, I first need more insight in whether such

Broad Research Question Introduction

participation is beneficial in the first place. From the case studies I deduct the general benefits experienced by organisations that are engaging in Social

1.3 INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES

Media. There are a large number of definitions of “intelligence” in academic To gain industry specific understanding, I conduct a content and best practices analysis of other, equally prominent intelligence agencies (i.e. FBI, CIA and Interpol), in relation to their Social Media engagement and compare the effects of their efforts to those of Europol, in chapter V. This addresses

literature, varying for each field. In the law enforcement literature we find intelligence defined as “the collection and analysis of information” (Schaap, 1994), or the knowledge—ideally, foreknowledge—sought by nations in response to external threats to protect their vital interests, especially the wellbeing of their own people (Kirkpatrick, 1997).

INTRODUCTION

The collected information is most of the time ''Classified information”, which

adversary for the sake of self-benefit is espionage and not intelligence.

is deemed to be “sensitive” and refers to any information or material that has

Intelligence is a wider concept and includes all possible ways of collecting

been determined to require protection against unauthorized disclosure in

information (Cools, 1996). Law enforcement scholars define intelligence as a

order to safeguard it against a use that would be contrary to its owner’s

product of an analytic process that a) evaluates information collected from

objectives (European Parliament study, 2010). The reasons such protection is

diverse sources (e.g. law enforcement databases, open source reporting,

needed are often related to national security.

surveillance, interview reports, evidence, biometrics, etc.), b) integrates the relevant information into a cohesive package, and c) produces a conclusion or

The regulation of access to classified information depends on their level of

estimate about a criminal phenomenon by using the scientific approach to

“sensitivity”, that is to say the potential seriousness of the consequences of

problem solving (i.e. analysis). Intelligence, therefore, is a synergistic product

their disclosure. The range of classification levels between sensitive

intended to provide meaningful and trustworthy direction to law enforcement

documents will command the authorisations allowing access to information,

decision makers about complex criminality, criminal enterprises, criminal

and its protection. Below are the different levels, with possible variants, as

extremists, terrorists, etc. (Carter, 2004).

defined

the

European

Parliament:

Unclassified information:

the

information does not have a sensitive character, and can thus be generally

Intelligence agencies can belong to either the public field, like the different

accessed; Restricted information: its disclosure could be problematic;

national and international intelligence agencies and special police services, or

Confidential information: cannot be disclosed as it could jeopardise national

to the private sector, like the private information brokers and security

security; Secret information: cannot be disclosed as it could seriously

companies. Private intelligence services are non-state security firms that often

jeopardise national security; Top secret information: its disclosure would have

offer a wide range of intelligence to their clients, primarily by collecting and

extremely serious consequences for national security and requires the strictest

analysing business or competitive intelligence information and providing

confidentiality level. Handling this kind of information is what has given the

assistance

intelligence agencies the reputation of being “secret”.

governmental agencies devoted to information gathering and analyses for

large

multinationals.

Public

Intelligence

agencies

are

purposes of security and defence. Or as defined by Johnson (1996): Taking into account that “secrecy is a vital element—perhaps the key

“government

agencies

that

conduct

secret

activities,

including

element—of intelligence” (Warner, 2007) it is important, to distinguish

counterintelligence, covert action and foremost, the collection and analysis of

between information that is gained secretly and that which is gained illegally.

information (from a mixture of open and covert sources) for the illumination

Illegal collection of information, intended to gather knowledge about an

of foreign policy deliberations.”

INTRODUCTION

In the U.S., in 2010 there were more than 1,200 government organizations

THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

working on counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence (Arkin and

(CIA)

Priest, 2010). Two very well-known examples in the U.S. are the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF

The CIA is responsible for providing intelligence on a wide range of national security issues to senior US policymakers. The U.S. President nominates and the Senate confirms the Director of the CIA, who is responsible for managing the operations, personnel and budget of the agency and acts as the National

INVESTIGATION (FBI)

Human Source Intelligence Manager (CIA website). The main mission of the

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a "threat-based and intelligence-

agency is to "collect, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence to assist

driven national security organization", with a mission to "protect and defend

the president and senior US government policymakers in making decisions

the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold

relating to the national security. The CIA does not make policy; it is an

and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership

independent source of foreign intelligence information for those who do. The

and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international

CIA may also engage in covert action at the president's direction in

agencies and partners".1

accordance with applicable law".2

Primarily a law enforcement agency, collecting intelligence related to

INTERPOL

domestic security as well as investigating federal crimes such as kidnapping, tax evasion and securities fraud, the role of the bureau until September 2001 was mainly reactive, investigating crimes after they occurred. The events of the 9/11 have served as a push for the bureau to assume a more predictive and preventive role using an “intelligence-driven approach to prevent crimes and acts of terrorism by disrupting and deterring those who would do us harm” (Idem).

1 http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/quick-facts

On an international level, intelligence is the information exchanged between member states for purposes of preventing, or combating, international forms of crime. Interpol is a globally operating example. It is the world’s largest international police organization, with a membership of 188 countries, “facilitating cross-border police co-operation, and supporting and assisting all organizations, authorities and services whose mission is to prevent or combat crime” (Interpol factsheet, 2011).

2 https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/todays-cia/what-we-do/index.html

INTRODUCTION

EUROPOL

operational agreements with Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Norway and the

On the European Union arena Europol comes as a key actor. The agency

United States, as well as strategic agreements with Albania, Moldova, SITCEN,

handles criminal intelligence and plays a key role in preventing, and

Frontex and other. Europol also works closely with and has an agreement to

combating terrorism, and other forms of serious international crime.

enhance international law enforcement co–operation with Interpol.

“Today's decision represents an extremely important step towards enhancing

The information exchange between Europol and Member States is facilitated

the security of residents of the EU and beyond. Efforts to harmonise the text

primarily through the Europol Liaison Officers (ELOs) on loan to the agency

of the Decision have been under way since the beginning of the existing Trio

by Member States to represent their national law enforcement agencies.

Presidency, and the achievement of political consensus was foreseen to take

Besides exchange of information Europol provides operational analysis and

place by the end of the Slovenian Presidency. And we have succeeded" (Mate,

support to Member State operations and contributes expertise and technical

2008).

support for investigations and operations within the EU under Member State authority. Strategic reports, including threat assessments, and crime analysis

The above statement was made after the 18 April, 2008 meeting in

based on intelligence provided by Member States and other sources are other

Luxembourg of the EU interior ministers, aiming to reach a political

products generated by the organisation (EU Insight, 2010).

consensus on the Council decision establishing Europol. Less than two years later, Europol has been transformed into an EU agency. Having had a modest

The role of Europol is often mistaken for that of Interpol. Below is a brief

start in 1994 (as the Europol Drugs Unit), the organisation’s mandate has

description of the differences between the two agencies.

throughout the years expanded to encompass all types of serious transnational crime. Fully operational on July 1, 1999, on January 1, 2010

EUROPOL & INTERPOL

Europol has obtained a central role in EU law enforcement cooperation. The

Having started out as a Criminal Police Commission in the 1923, Interpol has

“veritable transformation, not merely a cosmetic one” (Barrot 2010) of Europol

been around seven decades longer than Europol, which started out as the

has given the agency the necessary operational powers, increasing its

Europol Drugs Unit in 1994. The two organisations are frequently mistaken

autonomy in the field of freedom, security and justice.

for each other, due to their seemingly similar roles in the fight against organised crime. There are however significant differences between the

Even though an EU agency, Europol’s contribution to the intelligence-led law

organisations and contrary to the public misperception, there is no

enforcement is not limited to the Member States only. The agency has

competition between them.

INTRODUCTION

Aside from operating in different geographical ranges, (Interpol operates globally and Europol mainly in the EU) the two also play significantly different roles. The main word describing Interpol’s contribution to the global security is coordination. The organisation coordinates investigations at local, state and federal levels. Europol’s main contribution to the security in the EU is analyses. The agency employs Law Enforcement Experts from all over the European Union, who besides coordinating operations, also gather, analyse and disseminate information to the law enforcement agencies in the 27 European Union member states and in other non-EU partner states such as Australia, Canada, the USA and Norway.

Interpol and Europol both operate in several overlapping crime areas, such as: drugs and criminal organizations, illicit immigration and trafficking in human beings, terrorism and cybercrime. They both however also cover crime areas that the other doesn’t, such as: public safety and corruption in the case of Interpol, and illicit vehicle trafficking, money laundering and forgery of money in the case of Europol.

RESEARCH METHOD

2 RESEARCH METHOD The analytic strategy comprised a blend of qualitative and quantitative research methods. The qualitative method was based on techniques drawn mainly from Glaserian grounded theory (Glaser, 1978) and thematic analysis,

RESEARCH QUESTION

recurrent in ethnographic research (Ryan & Bernard, 2000) - direct quotes

1-C: Would Europol’s participation in Social Media more positively impact Social Media stakeholders’ opinions?

from interviews and literature review have been used to find common

Mission, Vision and Values analysis of: 1. CIA, 2. Interpol, 3. FBI, 4. Europol QUANTITATIVE METHOD Software-assisted data collection

Social Media Mentions and Top Keywords over 27/05/201127/09/2011: 1. CIA, 2. Interpol, 3. FBI, 4. Europol

Manual Data Mining

Social Media Sentiment Analysis for: 1. CIA, 2. Interpol, 3. FBI, 4. Europol

patterns and themes. The quantitative method involved a multi-staged data collection approach, combining direct observation data collection techniques, software-assisted data collection and evaluation of results, as well as manual analyses of software-assisted data collection. Table 2.1 below, gives an overview of the quantitative and qualitative methods that were employed per sub-question in order to answer the main research question: “To what extent could Europol use Social Media to improve stakeholder opinions on Social Media?”

2.1 QUALITATIVE METHOD

Table 2.1: Overview of research methods

Data sources: Data for the qualitative analysis were based on three main

RESEARCH QUESTION

QUALITATIVE METHOD

sources: 1) archival materials, 2) interviews with corporate managers of three

1-A: What are the strategic benefits of Social Media for organisations in terms of managing stakeholders’ opinions of the company on Social Media?

Archival materials

104 sources: Articles, websites, journals, publications, books.

firm with the use of Social Media and 3) interviews with six Europol employees.

Case Studies/Interviews

1. 2. 3.

1-B: How do other intelligence agencies engage Social Media to manage these opinions?

organisations, in change of communicating to external stakeholders about the

Direct observation data collection

The European Commission The European Patent office The Dutch Safety Board

Social Media engagement practices of: 1. CIA, 2. Interpol and 3. FBI

Interviews: The European Law Enforcement agency (Europol), has served as the catalyst for this research. For this reason I chose to interview the latter group - to get more insight into the general attitude towards the idea of engaging the Social Media for our organisation. To ensure exclusion of the bias

“Communications

professional

surveying

Communications

RESEARCH METHOD

professionals” this group comprised of providers who met the following

2.2 QUANTITATIVE METHOD

inclusion criteria: (a) work in a field other than Communications and included Information Security Officers, Operations middle management, Operations assistants and Analysts; (b) understand the use of Social Media for external stakeholders’ engagement purposes.

To better understand the positioning of other organisations vis-à-vis the use of Social Media and to gather more insight into the benefits experienced by them from engaging online, I have interviewed Corporate Communications managers at the European Commission, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Dutch Safety Board (OVV).

Data sources: Data for the quantitative analysis was based on two main sources: 1) Social Media websites and Feeds and 2) Social Media Monitoring tools.

Direct observation data collection: Direct observation data collection methods were employed to identify the individual strategies and efforts of Social Media engagement among 3 different Intelligence agencies: the CIA, Interpol and FBI. The observation occurred over the course of roughly one year (2010-2011) by observing the activity the three organisations on Social Media websites that they are present on, such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and

A set of open-ended questions have been developed for in-depth interviews. The questions solicit information about the types of benefits that the

Facebook. Table 2.2 below, provides an overview of the sampled activity per intelligence agency.

interview participants have encountered in the use of Social Media channels within their classified information environment.

The interviews had duration of 50 to 80 minutes each and were mostly conducted at the interviewee’s workplace. The interviews have been recorded and transcribed verbatim.

Archival materials: consisted of (academic) articles on Media Effects, Social Networking and the use of Social Media for external communication practices. These sources were used to examine how the issue has evolved from the traditional media to the modern trends.

Table 2.2: Overview of the level of engagement per Intelligence agency AGENCY

INTERPOL

CIA

Facebook Active since Nr. months active on:08/08/11 URL Posts Likes Activity Frequency (p/m) Twitter Active since Nr. months active on:08/08/11 URL Tweets Followers Following Activity Frequency (p/m)

FBI

24-9-2010 11 http://www.facebo ok.com/FBI?sk=wal l151

130524 13,7

25-6-2009 27,84 http://twitter.co m/#!/interpol_icp o 109

4741 10 3,9

31-3-2009 41 http://twitter.com/ #!/FBIPressOffice

3692 211082 810 90,04

RESEARCH METHOD

YouTube Active since Nr. months active on:08/08/11 URL

Total Channel Views Total Video's Posted Total Upload Views Subscribers Activity Frequency (p/m)

5-11-2006 57

21-3-2008 39,96

http://www.yout ube.com/user/IN TERPOLHQ?ob=5 #g/u

http://www.youtub e.com/user/ciagov #g/u

http://www.youtu be.com/user/FBID OTGOV?ob=5

6808 26 29107 67 2,3

116874 19 240751 1,686 0,33

116454 64 1209897 3380 1,6

Flickr

22-9-2010 10,992

Flickr Active since Nr. months active on:08/08/11 Flickr URL

2-1-2011 8

Total added Photos Twitter views Total Comments Activity Frequency (p/m)

152 62600 0 19

http://www.flickr.c om/photos/ciagov

regardless of the amount of engagement efforts, or the lack thereof on the part of an organisation and give a good indication of an agency’s reputation.

Software-assisted data collection and evaluation of results: Monitoring online works in similar ways as asking opinions through surveys or focus groups. By reading the comments in blogs, articles, posts made to forums and websites like Twitter and Facebook, conclusions can be drawn and solid opinions can be formulated regarding the status and reputation of a brand, or organisation online. Social Media Monitoring tools are the modern “press clipping services”. To measure the Social Media engagement efforts of the intelligence agencies I used Social Media monitoring software. Narrowing down the selection of a tool was a matter of comparison and accessibility. The comparison made it clear that most of the Social Media monitoring tools use very similar techniques and generate similar reports. The most common

Metrics: The number of mentions and the sentiment, as the two main metrics used in this research to measure the Intelligence agencies’ Social Media

functionalities of Social Media monitoring software offer the following use: 1.

"European Union")

initiatives and their effectiveness. The reason I chose these particular metrics versus other, is due to the fact that they offer a good indication of what’s going on online despite whether an agency is engaging, or not. The same

Refine the search on languages, countries, platforms etc.

Search combined terms so that the search picks up online, comments, articles and posts about the topic that you wish to track. The search

comparison cannot be made if I had for example, chosen the number of Fans

query uses Boolean operators (e.g. OR, AND)

and Followers as a metric, since an agency can only gain “tangible” or measurable numbers of Fans and Followers, if it is engaging. This is not to say that if an agency does not engage, there are no Social Media users that are a fan of, or favouring the agency’s practices. They are just not being registered through clicks or subscriptions and can therefore not be measured. The number of mentions and the sentiment on the other hand, can be measured

Create search queries to research the topic that you wish to track (e.g.

Representation of the results in the form of reports and graphs.

Click through to view further details (e.g. web analytics of specific sources) or to access original content (e.g. the original blog post, news post, or Tweet).

RESEARCH METHOD

Export functionalities, allowing exporting the data into other formats

The majority of the social monitoring software will interpret the first two

(e.g. Excel).

comments as having a positive sentiment, due to the presence of positive keywords, such as “love”, “very happy” and the last comment as a negative

"SocialMention"3 – an online Social Media search engine that searches user-

“kick ass”. However the only negative comment in reality is the second one

generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, twitter feeds and

and not the third. Two out of three comments are already incorrectly

videos was used to collect the data for this research. The results of the

classified. Moreover, ironic comments are most of the time interpreted as

searches were used towards evaluation and generating reports detailing data

positive. The same stands for sarcasm. Until computers are smart enough to

information such as the number of mentions (i.e. the number of times that a

accurately detect human emotions and not just "good" keywords versus "bad"

searched keyword has been referred to on Social Media) and the sentiment of

keywords, sentiment analyses — unless moderated by a human — cannot be

the mention (i.e. negative, positive, neutral).

100% relied upon.

The data was used to measure and compare the level of popularity and the

Manual data mining: In order to overcome this limitation, I have manually

sentiment around the 3 organisations that are active on the Social Media

analysed the data collected by "SocialMention". The records generated by the

channels, weighed against the level of popularity and the sentiment around

software, have been imported into a SQL database. With the help of a simple

Europol, which is not active on Social Media at all. The importance of

interface that I designed in order to facilitate the reading of the content, I

sentiment analysis for firms has been growing, but it is far from an exact

have personally read each collected mention and identified the sentiment

science. In 2010 U.S. researchers made some noise claiming that Twitter was

attached to it. The sentiments have been classified in positive, neutral and

87.6% accurate in predicting the movements of the stock market based on

negative, similar to the way that it is done by the software-assisted data

sentiment analysis (Bollen, Mao and Zeng, 2010). But this data has been

analyses. Below are a couple of examples of the comments that were analysed

deemed controversial as more research found that a software sentiment

and the sentiment that I classified them with:

analysis was only about 79% reliable (Biz360, 2010). Let’s consider some

Negative: “CIA is not an intelligence agency. It is an anti-intelligence

(hypothetical) examples of mentions:

agency. The CIA uses disinformation, much of it aimed at the U.S.

“I love these results from Europol”

“I’m not very happy with the results produced by Europol”

“Europol’s results kick ass!”

3 http://www.socialmention.com

public, to mold opinion.” 4

4 www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/jag6r/cia_is_not_an_intelligence_agency_it_is_an; Sat, 06 Aug 2011 02:15; submitted by alllie;

RESEARCH METHOD

Positive: “It would be an inspiration for Turkish Police The FBI has

Figure 2.2: FBI photobucket user added image Example 2

just released its very first mobile app.” 5 Neutral: “Europol gathers experts in the fight against non-Islamic.” 6

The meaning of positive and negative sentiments is straightforward; they either express affinity, or dislike the organisation being mentioned. Neutral mentions are most of the time comments that neither express affinity, nor dislike towards. In the majority of the cases a neutral mention is in fact a quoted, forwarded, reposted or retweeted content, initially published by the organisation itself, such as a press release, a news item, or a publication. The frequency of an organisation's content (press releases, publications, news etc.) being circulated (retweeted, reposted, forwarded, shared etc.) is a good indicator of the effectiveness their strategy. Images have been assessed in the same manner as the mentions and categorised over the same categories. Below are examples of images with a negative tone.

Figure 2.1: FBI photobucket user added image Example 1

Data was sampled based on a period of 4 months between (27/05/201127/09/2011). This analysis has resulted in 2112 records being analysed. The results have served as the bases for the propositions and conclusion of this research. An overview of all the data and the results of the data mining are provided in Table 2.3 to Table 2.7 below.

Table 2.3: FBI subset of manually assessed data Manual analyses (based on data extracted from Socialmention database) Period of analysis: 08/07/2011-08/08/2011 + 150 Random records from all records found

5 http://twitter.com/#!/TheHolySaint/statuses/100639992723935233; submitted by asbicakci; 6 http://twitter.com/#!/jnewsreader/statuses/100049577968795648; submitted by JewPI News 7 s538.photobucket.com/albums/ff341/luvlylindzmiss/?action=view&current=FBI.jpg;

sentiment

Total records analysed: 719

Negative opinion

Total irrelevant or illegible records: 187

Neutral opinion Positive opinion Irrelevant

count

% 41

475 16 187

66% 2% 26%

8 http://s110.photobucket.com/albums/n90/Gillian_jiron/?action=view&current=The_Fbi.jpg;

RESEARCH METHOD

Total valid mentions TOTAL mentions Table 2.4: CIA subset of manually assessed data

532 719

Manual analyses (based on data extracted from Socialmention database) Period of analysis: 08/07/2011-08/08/2011 sentiment count + 150 Random records from all records found

Total records analysed: 495

Total irrelevant or illegible records: 232

Negative opinion

Neutral opinion Positive opinion Irrelevant

Total valid mentions TOTAL mentions

Table 2.6: Europol subset of manually assessed data

74% 100%

Manual analyses (based on data extracted from Socialmention database) Period of analysis: 08/07/2011-08/08/2011 + 150 Random records from all records found

15%

184 6 232 263 495

37% 1% 47% 53% 100%

sentiment

Total records analysed: 369

Negative opinion

Total irrelevant or illegible records: 101

Neutral opinion Positive opinion Irrelevant

count

Total valid mentions TOTAL mentions

248 7 101 268 369

67% 2% 27% 73% 100%

Table 2.7: Results

Table 2.5: Interpol subset of manually assessed data Manual analyses (based on data extracted from Socialmention database) Period of analysis: 08/07/2011-08/08/2011 + 150 Random records from all records found

Total records analysed: 529 Total irrelevant or illegible records: Band related: 256 Other: 114

sentiment

Negative opinion

CIA

Output: Nr. of Engagement efforts (per month) Output: Nr. of Engagement efforts (per 4 months) Input: Mentions

105

Interpol Europol Average Average STD 6 0 32,5 42,417567

420

130

169,67027

Mentions over 4 months (27/05/2011-27/09/2011): Irrelevant mentions over 4 months Valid mentions over 4 months:

416

516

532

205

417

130,356

108

242

372

195

122,90952

308

274

160

149

223

69,409563

Nr. of Mentions p/m

Nr. negative

27,093934

Nr. neutral

275

192

133

138

184

57,169025

Nr. positive

3,4356605

EFFECTIVENESS = % of positive + neutral/2

48%

37%

50%

49%

46%

Numbers: (over 4 months)

Neutral opinion Positive opinion Irrelevant Total valid mentions TOTAL mentions

count

FBI

132 13 370 159 529

25% 2% 70% 30% 100%

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

framework.

Notions

from

Reputation

Management,

belongingness

(Baumeister and Leary, 1995) as well as social capital (Burt, 1992; Bourdieu, The fact that media can influence people and their behaviour is, today, a

1985; Coleman, 1988) theories were used to root the applicability of media

widely accepted notion. For almost a century communication scholars have

effects to Social Media. Table 3.1 below, provides an overview of this

been debating the degree of that influence, as well as who is most impacted,

framework and its salience in the Social Media context.

why, under what circumstances and when. As a result of those debates the Media Effects tenet has emerged. Media effects refers to the many ways in

Table 3.1: Overview of the theoretical framework

which individuals and society may be influenced by deferent mediums such as

AUTHOR

television, news, film, radio, music, books, magazines, websites and video games. The communication models of this tenet have evolved from one-way

STREAM OF

APPLICATION TO SOCIAL MEDIA

THOUGHT McCombs & Carroll, 2003

Sharing information on Social Media helps organisations:

and linear process of message dissemination (Shannon and Weaver, 1949) as the cause of behavioural, or psychological response as the effect to a more

“Agenda-setting”

complex, two-way process (Bryant and Thompson, 2002), that is more interactive in nature, in which the medium affects the recipients, but the

a) build networks; b)“survive”; c) impact the media, public and policy agenda; d) create awareness; e) gain importance; f) manage reputations;

recipient, in turn, can influence and shape the sender, and the message (McCombs and Shaw, 1972). This transactional aspect of the Media Effects

McGuire, 1974

Sharing information on Social Media helps organisations:

resonates with the main characteristic of Social Media as a communication “Uses & gratifications”

channel and validates this scholarly perspective as a relevant precursor for

a) gratify user needs; b) develop cognition- and affect-based trust.

“Social Media Effects” research. Noelle-Neumann, 1974

Sharing information on Social Media helps organisations:

Five propositions regarding the influence of mass media on corporate reputations (McCombs & Carroll, 2003) shape the correlative framework of this literature review. Three streams of thought related to the effects of media on audiences, mainly: the Agenda-setting theory (McCombs and Shaw, 1972), the Spiral of Silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1974) and Uses & Gratifications (McGuire, 1974) are further used to build up and elaborate the correlative

“The Spiral of Silence”

a) lower the effects of the Spiral of Silence; b) lower the power of the opposition(i.e. groups with negative opinions on SM); c) lower unsupportive behaviour on the part of stakeholders; d) reduce mistrust and misunderstanding; c) improve transparency;

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

3.1 WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?

plaques bearing personal correspondence dated as far back as 2000 BC, which brings the existence of Social Media up to about 4000 years.

Social or Sociable Media are traditionally defined as the media that enhance communication and the formation of social ties among people (Donath, 2004). Media in this definition refers to a technology type, or platform. Blogs, vlogs, photo sharing, video sharing, wikis, podcasts, micro-blogs, music sharing, forums, ratings and reviews, social bookmarks, and online communities, are some examples of the long list of technologies covered by the umbrella-term of Social Media. Their purpose is to facilitate creation of online communities of people who share interests and activities, also referred to as Social Networks. A social network is composed of nodes - people, groups, organizations or other social entities, connected by a set of relationships (Wellman and Berkowitz, 1994). The contents of these social relationships (or links) are communication exchanges or information transfers. There are Social Networks to cater every niche, every interest, every demographic and every geographic region. Social Networking is the act of

New, however, are the current corporate trends in the application of this media.

The

social

networking

technologies

that

enable

globalized

communication are augmenting how we interact, get information and do business. The worldwide economic recession has imposed pressure for organisations to find new ways to generate revenue with minimal investment. The highly accessible and scalable nature of the Social Media offers the perfect solution, and allows companies to inexpensively engage Social Media for marketing, and PR purposes. The practice of facilitating dialogue and sharing content between companies, influencers, prospects and customers through the use of Social Media has therefore emerged as a definition for Social Media marketing (MarkettingSherpa, 2009). It is this specific application of Social Media that I analyse in this research, applied to intelligence agencies.

forming new relationships and strengthening old ones by using Social Media (Sweeney and Craig, 2010).

3.2 AGENDA-SETTING THEORY

To create systems that better support social networking, researchers and

A ground breaking study conducted by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw

developers of Social Media draw from fields such as cognitive science,

in 1972, on the role of the media in the 1968 presidential campaign in Chapel

sociology and urban design. The media might have morphed with innovation

Hill, North Carolina, sheds light on the relationship between the agenda of

and rapid progress of the modern technology; sociable media however are not

the media and the public agenda (Funkhouser, 1973). The authors found a

a modern occurrence. Historically, the most common sociable media were

direct correlation between an issue and "how much importance is attached to

messages written on physical objects conveyed from sender to receiver,

that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position"

otherwise referred to as letters. Archaeologists have found clay tablets and

(McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Cohen put this as follows: "The press may not be

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is

these propositions to the Social Media context, as well as explore their

stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about" (Cohen, 1963).

association with prior research.

McCombs progressed to formulate the following five propositions regarding

3.3 BRAND AWARENESS

the influence of mass media on corporate reputations (McCombs & Carroll, Proposition 1: To improve public awareness on the Social Media it is

2003): 1)

“The amount of news coverage that a firm receives in the news media

important that a firm is frequently mentioned on the channels. Therefore, the

is positively related to the public’s awareness of the firm.” (p.39)

more an organization shares its news on the Social Media channels the more

2) “The amount of news coverage devoted to particular attributes of a firm is positively related to the proportion of the public who define

the chances are that the news, and subsequently the organization itself will gain importance in the public opinion.

the firm by those attributes.” (p.40) 3) “The more positive that media coverage is for a particular attribute,

The importance of generating awareness can be seen in the great length that

the more positively will members of the public perceive that

companies go to, to maximise exposure. In 2010, businesses spent more than

attribute. Conversely, the more negative that media coverage is for a

$131.1 billion on advertising fees (Kantar Media, 2011) on traditional media

particular attribute, the more negatively will members of the public

channels, TV, radio, magazines, newspapers etc. Awareness is sought after in

perceive that attribute.” (p.41)

order to gain new and keep existing customers, sell products, generate

4) “The agenda of substantive and affective attributes associated with a

investment, build a positive image, gain competitive advantage, etc.

firm in business news coverage, especially those attributes specifically linked with a firm, primes the public’s attitude and opinion about the

Borges (2009) moreover, found that today's stakeholders want to be engaged

firm.” (p.42)

differently than previously and that many traditional marketing channels

5) “Organized efforts to communicate a corporate agenda will result in a

simply do not work as well anymore. “The outbound marketing tactics that

significant degree of correspondence between the attribute agenda of

worked in the 1980s and 1990s just don’t work anymore in the late first decade

the firm and the news media.” (p.42)

of the new millennium.” Borges claims that what stakeholders want are

These five propositions shape the correlative framework of this theoretical

relationships, “They want to know you and your people. They want to know

analysis and serve as a “roadmap” for this chapter. Below I adapt and apply

that you’re listening to them, and they actually want to engage you, the seller, in conversations.” Social Media is a revolutionary platform that offers an

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

inexpensive way to build solid relationships with constituencies and the shift

performance (Leavitt, 1951; Mehra, et al., 2001; Sparrowe, et al., 2001),

from one-way broadcast to two-way conversation is nowhere more palpable

knowledge utilization (Tsai, 2001), innovation (Perry-Smith and Shalley,

than in the Social Media realm. Word-of-mouth is gaining importance over

2003), etc. These studies have generally shown that by networking an

advertising: “Consumers are looking to peers for recommendations on

organisation can create a status of power, establish itself as a leader, maximise

products, services, health issues, and more via Social Media. Today, 76% rely

its revenues, improve performance and get access to intelligence, etc.

on what others say, while 15% rely on advertising” (Qualman, 2010). A study conducted among over 3300 marketers, showed that the number-one

The value that can be derived from social inclusion can further be deducted

advantage of Social Media marketing is generating more business exposure, as

from the research of the negative consequences that occur when social

indicated by 88% of marketers, followed by increasing traffic (72%) and

belongingness cannot be achieved, which has been proven to lead to mental

building new business partnerships (Stelzner, 2011). This is due to the fact that

and physical health problems, a lowered immune system, depression, and

this medium provides easy access to a large number of a company’s

loneliness (Cacioppo et al., 2003).

stakeholders since more than three quarters (78%) of the online population are frequent Social Media users (Collins, 2011).

The detrimental effects of exclusion from a network on a corporate level are salient in the stakeholder theory which was first used in 1963 at the Stanford

The importance of having access to stakeholders is rooted in the

Research Institute. This study labelled a company’s stakeholders, such as

belongingness theory (Baumeister and Leary, 1995) which claimed that

shareowners, employees, customers, lenders, investors, suppliers and society,

creating and maintaining close relationships with others is a fundamental

as “those groups without whose support the organisation would cease to exist”

need, common to all humans, equivalently important as the need to eat and

(Freeman, 1984, p. 13). The author argued that for a company to survive, it

drink. The “need to belong” is deemed to benefit both survival and

needs networks of stakeholders who show supportive behaviour to the

reproduction, as an essential part of natural selection. Developing and

company’s corporate objectives. Social Media offers the perfect platform for

maintaining social networks, stems from this universal human need for social

organisations to “survive” by offering access to build networks and engage

belongingness and has also been studied in the context of organizational

with and earn the support of stakeholders.

research,

including

stakeholder

relations

(Rowley,

1997),

inter-firm

collaboration (Jones, et al.,1997), power (Brass, 1984), entrepreneurship

3.4 USES & GRATIFICATIONS THEORY

(Renzulli, et al., 2000), leadership (Sparrowe and Liden, 1997), turnover (Krackhardt and Porter, 1985), profit maximization (Burt, 1992), job

Proposition 2: The more a set of particular attributes about a firm are

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

mentioned on Social Media, the higher the chances are that the public will

information from the platforms where Intelligence, or Law enforcement

define the firm by those attributes. It is therefore important for firms to

agencies are active. These groups are the potential seekers of news revolving

increase the amount of Social Media communication efforts around the

around their and their countries’ safety and need to gratify their need for

attributes that they desire to be perceived by.

security. One could therefore argue that “gratifying” this need through sharing on Social Media information which helps create a feeling of safety, an

Besides the fact that social networks may help organizations to “survive”

Intelligence agency helps reduce uncertainty and creates a supportive

(Freeman, 1984, p. 13), there is another important and positive consequence of

environment (Hunt and Morgan, 1994) and therefore develops trust among

open information sharing practices on Social Media channels, which is:

the “safety seeking” stakeholders.

building trust. Uses and Gratifications (U&G) (Herzog 1944; McGuire 1974) - a widely studied Media Effects theory - serves as a paradigm for this concept. The U&G body of research attempted to understand why people used certain media and disregard others, and found that people are active and goal directed, thus not passive recipients of information, and their choices are driven by their need to fulfil specific gratifications, which are based on individual, social and psychological requirements (Severin and Tankard, 1997).

Katz (1973) identified 35 needs and grouped them under five main categories: cognitive needs (e.g. acquiring information, knowledge and understanding); affective needs (e.g. emotion, pleasure, feelings); personal integrative needs (e.g. credibility, stability, status); social integrative needs (e.g. interacting with family and friends); and tension release needs (e.g. escape and diversion).

In the Social Media context, this theory suggests that users will be motivated to select a Social Media platform that best gratifies their needs. For example those seeking to gratify tension release or safety needs, might seek to gather

3.5 TRUST An understanding of the importance of trust in business and consumer relationships resonates all over the world. ‘‘Familiarity breeds trust’’ (Gulati, 1995). In the intelligence-led context, as shown by the findings of a research conducted at NATO showed that there was a need to rebuild public trust with a more routine openness, abandoning unnecessary secrecy in order to withstand the challenges that the new technologies and structures of global terrorism are presenting (Oxford, 2005). Repeated interaction has been found to lead to the institutionalisation of behaviour. “Any human activity that is frequently repeated is subject to habituation, which frees the individual from having to make decisions and thus provides psychological relief’’ (De Jong and Nooteboom, 2000, in Akkermans et al., 2004). Along with commitment to mutual interest and objectives (Naude and Buttle, 2000), trust in partners was found to be one of the essential aspects of network participation. The two aspects are interdependent and together they enable cooperation between organizations (Hunt and Morgan, 1994), as well as between an organisation

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

and its stakeholders. Companies seek to build trust with their stakeholders,

3.6 REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

just as individuals are aiming to build trust in their daily relationships with friends, family, and colleagues. When you trust someone you are more likely

Proposition 3: The sentiment around a particular attribute on the Social

to find them credible, you will value their experience and knowledge, you will

Media, will define the sentiment with which Social Media users will perceive

give them your confidence and are more likely to engage in business practices

that attribute. For an effective Social Media engagement in order to improve

with them.

reputation it is therefore of great importance to increase the amount of positive mentions and lower the amount of negative ones.

Organizational research suggests that depending on distinct psychological processes, based on competence and warmth – the two basic dimensions on

“…(he) who steals my purse steals trash…But he that filches from me my good

which people judge others (Fiske, Cuddy and Glick, 2007) - there are two

name…makes me poor indeed”, Shakespeare9. With this quote in Othello,

different types of trust (McAllister, 1995; Zucker, 1986): cognition- and affect-

Shakespeare captured the modern common-sense thinking on the subject of

based trust (McAllister, 1995).

corporate reputation. “A Corporate Reputation is a perceptual representation of a company’s past actions and future prospects that describe the firm’s

Chua et al. (2008), defined cognition-based trust as “rational trust”, which is

overall appeal to all of its key constituents when compared with other leading

judgement based on evidences of competence, and reliability; and affect-

rivals” (Fombrun, 1996, p.72).

based trust, as “emotional trust”, based on feelings that an organisation is concerned with the welfare of their partners, or stakeholders.

Today, top executives will agree that their company's good name is a fundamental asset, the loss of which is quantifiable and potentially

The Social Media is an accessible platform to help an organisation develop

catastrophic. The demise of Arthur Andersen LLP and the collapse of Enron

both types of trust with its stakeholders online. Sharing operational successes,

have become living proof of this as well as typecasts for poor reputation

as well as facts and figures, can serve as evidences of competence and

practice. A weak reputation has both internal and external effects on the

reliability, and help build cognition-based trust. Likewise, by sharing

behavioural and economic performance of a company (Fomrbrun and

information on, for example, an organisation’s efforts towards Corporate

Rindova, 2001, p. 80). A positive reputation can be rewarding in various ways.

Responsibility can help improve the perception that the organisation is

The price of the company’s market shares will go up, customers pay premium

concerned with the welfare of its stakeholders, which in turn will build affect-

prices for the products of companies that have a good reputation and

based trust. 9

Othello Act 3, scene 3, 155–161

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

employees are happy to work for reputable companies (Fomrbrun and

commonly draw upon the bits of information that are particularly frequently

Rindova, 2001). Organizations “build up “reputation capital” to tide them over

mentioned and have the strongest sentiment at the time.

in turbulent times. It’s like opening a savings account for a rainy day. If a crisis strikes . . . reputation suffers less and rebounds more quickly” (Alsop,

To describe the process of public opinion formation, Elizabeth Noelle-

2004, p. 17).

Neumann introduced the mass communication theory of the Spiral of Silence in 1974. The theory revolves around the notion that people fear isolation and

In the Social Media context, according to the survey results of a research

in order to avoid it, will becomes less inclined to voice opposing opinions to

study conducted by Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law (2009) among 438

those that are publicly prevalent in the social environment. This in turn gives

randomly selected management, marketing and human resources executives

weight to the publicly prevalent opinion, or as the author put it: “the tendency

within companies across the United States show that eight in 10 executives

of the one to speak up and the other to be silent starts off a spiralling process

believe that Social Media can build brand reputation (81%). This is not

which increasingly establishes one’s opinion as the prevailing one” (p. 44).

surprising considering that in 2008, on average 75,000 blogs were created

This separates society into two groups according to Noelle-Neumann: the

daily, with 1.2 million new posts that often included consumer opinions on

ones that speak up (group A) and the ones that are silent (group B).

products and services (Pang and Lee, 2008). Stakeholders transitioned from being influenced, to being the influencers, which is making “corporate

Group A type of people believe that their opinion is accepted by the society

reputations profoundly vulnerable to the whims of empowered stakeholders”

so, they express their point of view in public strongly and with great self-

(Reputation Institute, 2010). Therefore, participation on Social Media enables

confidence. This kind of attitude is usually attractive and because of the need

firms to influence the influencers, positively impact their opinions and

to belong, which I previously described in this thesis, more people will join

therewith effectively manage their reputations.

group A, making the group stronger and more confident (also in the perception of other people in the society).

3.7 THE SPIRAL OF SILENCE THEORY The opposite occurs for group B. Lacking the self-confidence to express their Proposition 4: The agenda of the Social Media users’ attitude and opinions about a firm are formed based on the substantive and affective attributes associated with a firm covered on the Social Media. Meaning that when users express opinions, rather than basing them on the total “picture”, they

opinion and out of fear that it will not be accepted, they prefer to remain “silent”. They further start to decrease in number and their perception about their opinion weakens. This process can go on in a loop structure, forming the

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Spiral of Silence, until only a few people remain in group B and group A

3.8 TRANSPARENCY

dominates the society. Proposition 5: Transparent communication practices, by purposefully and In the Social Media context, by displaying an introvert attitude through not

strategically communicating a corporate agenda on the Social Media will

participating

result in a significant degree of correspondence between the attribute agenda

the

discussions

going

online,

organisation

automatically categorises itself into the “silent group” - group B and starts the

of the firm and the attribute agenda on the Social Media.

Spiral of Silence. Especially when these discussions revolve around the organisation itself, by allowing those that are talking to do so without

Transparent communication practices are not only important in the Agenda-

intervening, an organisation allows these group become the dominating one

setting context. Mutually benefitting relationships require trust, “which in

and their opinion the prevailing one. This can prove especially damaging to

turn implies transparency and honesty” (The Edelman Trust Barometer 2007).

the reputation of an organisation if the opinions expressed by group A are

Academic literature clearly suggests that to improve trust communication

negative, or misleading.

practices of organizations must be open and transparent. “Leading firms are opening up pertinent information to all these groups (investors, employees,

Aside from the risks from the effects of the Spiral of Silence, the lack of

customers, partners, media) because they reap significant benefits from doing

participation on the Social Media channels, which are becoming ever more

so…transparency is a powerful new force for business success,” (Tapscott and

widely accepted by the society for openly expressing opinions, further fosters

Williams, 2008). Richard Edelman in the Edelman Trust Barometer (2007)

the risk of being perceived as in-transparent and concealing relevant

claimed that “continuous, transparent -

information. Introversion, distorting or concealing relevant information,

communications is central” to business success in today’s new environment

avoiding to state or disclose facts, ideas and conclusions have been proven to

(p. 2).

and

even

passionate

cause lack of trust (Zand, 1972), create suspiciousness and increase the likelihood of misunderstandings and misinterpretation (Westerlund, et al.

The Johnson & Johnson, “Tylenol case” is an example of the priceless value of

2009), as observed in Europol´s case. One could therefore argue that lack of

transparency. In the fall of 1982, seven people died after ingesting capsules

participation alone, can attract mistrust and unsupportive behaviour on the

that had been poisoned with cyanide. The first and best decision on the part

part of stakeholders.

of the company was to adopt a policy of full disclosure and openness. This constituted the key to the brand’s survival (Corpen Group, 2010).

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Social Media is changing the nature of communication, making transparency a dominating feature thereof: “Our mission since Day 1 has been to make society more open” Dave Morin, former Facebook executive states. Various scholars have concluded that being transparent can bring multiple benefits to

Political Literature

Piotrowski (2007)

an organisation. Table 3.2 below outlines a few of the perspectives. Table 3.2: Overview of academic literature on the benefits of transparency GROUNDED

SCHOLARS

BENEFIT

QUOTE

Muscarella and Vetsuypens (1989); Ang and Brau (2002)

Transparency reduces asymmetric information

Diamond & Verrecchia (1991); Subrahmanyam and Titman (1999), Ang and Brau (2002); Botosan and Plumlee (2002)

Transparency reduces cost of capital

"Muscarella and Vetsuypens argue that a track record of continuous information verification is valuable in mitigating potential information asymmetries." (Ang and Brau, 2002) "Revealing public information to reduce information asymmetry can reduce a firm’s costs of capital by attracting increased demand from large investors due to increased liquidity of its securities." (Diamond & Verrecchia, 1991)

Datar, Naik, and Radcliffe (1998); Lang, Lins and Maffett, (2010)

Transparency increases liquidity

Coglianese, et al. (2008)

IN Financial Literature

"Firms that are more transparent pay less." (Ang and Brau, 2002) “Firms with greater transparency, as measured by quality of accounting standards, quality of auditor, level of earnings management, analyst following and analyst forecast accuracy, are characterized by less volatility in liquidity, as well as lower correlations between firm level liquidity and market liquidity and between firm level liquidity and stock returns. Further, more transparent firms are less likely to experience ―extreme liquidity

Public Relations

Case Studies

Transparency allows the public to develop a more accurate picture of what is happening inside Transparency strengthens the connections between government agencies and the public they serve

Rawlins (2009)

Transparency motivates improvement

Rawlins (2008)

Transparent organisations are more likely to be trusted

Deloitte (2008)

Transparency enhances productivity and contributes to more ethical workplace culture; Transparency is critical to keeping employees engaged

events, where liquidity essentially vanishes and trading becomes prohibitively costly.” (Lang and Maffett, 2010) "Governmental transparency allows the public to develop a more accurate picture of what is happening inside a government" “Both transparency and public participation can promote democratic legitimacy by strengthening the connections between government agencies and the public they serve.” “Transparency will expose an organization’s weaknesses, and areas that need improvement. Hiding these does not make them go away. Positive feedback that everything is okay, when it isn’t, only reinforces the debilitating behaviour. Sure, transparency might make an organization feel uncomfortable, but it will also motivate it to improve.” "In particular, organizations that encourage and allow public participation, share substantial information so their publics can make informed decisions, give balanced reports that hold them accountable, and open themselves up to public scrutiny, are more likely to be trusted." “Transparency and openness by workplace leaders enhances productivity and contributes to more ethical workplace culture”

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In dictionaries the adjective “transparent” is defined as the condition of being

balanced, and unequivocal’’ further distinguishes legally releasable and

“pervious to light,” “free from pretence or deceit,” and “allowing to see

positive, or negative.

through with clarity” (Webster’s online dictionary). Bushman, et al. (2003) for example, defined transparency as “the availability of firm-specific information

To understand how the information should be disclosed for an organisation to

to those outside publicly traded firms, and viewed as the joint output of

be perceived as transparent we can look to the same definition. Heise

multi-faceted systems whose components collectively produce, gather,

mentions accurately, timely, balanced, and unequivocal as strategic

validate and disseminate information to market participants.”

approaches. Another political scholar, Cotterrell (1999) distinguished the intrinsic purpose

Making available as a prerequisite of transparent behaviour is also reinforced

of being transparent: “the availability of information on matters of public

in the definitions of political scholars: “Transparency comprises the legal,

concern, the ability of citizens to participate in political decision, and the

political, and institutional structures that make information about the internal

accountability of government to public opinion or legal processes.” Backing

characteristics of a government and society available to actors both inside and

the latter definition up is Balkin’s distinction of the three primary purposes

outside the domestic political system. Transparency is increased by any

for transparency: providing information to stakeholders, fostering public

mechanism that leads to the public disclosure of information, whether a free

participation, and holding organizations accountable (1999). Rawlins (2009)

press, open government, hearings, or the existence of nongovernmental

has further build on the above three purposes and has specified the following

organizations with an incentive to release objective information about the

determining elements of transparency: - providing information that is

government” (Finel and Lord, 1999). “Put simply, transparency is the opposite

truthful, substantial, and useful; - participation of stakeholders in identifying

of secrecy. Secrecy means deliberately hiding your actions; transparency

the information they need; - and objective, balanced reporting of an

means deliberately revealing them” (Florini, 1998).

organization’s activities and policies that holds the organization accountable. In conclusion we can summarise transparency as deliberately disclosing /

So deliberately disclosing information to internal and external stakeholders is

making available: (WHAT?) “firm-specific” (Bushman, 2003), “legally

necessary if an organisation is to be perceived as transparent. But what kind

releasable information—whether positive or negative in nature” (Heise, 1985),

of information can be disclosed? The above-quoted Bushman definition

(HOW?) “in a manner which is accurate, timely, balanced, and unequivocal’’

mentions firm-specific. Heise (1985) who defined being transparent as the act

(Idem), (WHY?) for the purpose of providing information, fostering public

of making “available publicly all legally releasable information—whether

participation, and holding organizations accountable (Balkin, 1999; Rawlins,

positive or negative in nature—in a manner which is accurate, timely,

2009).

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Figure 3.1: Transparency

services, financial performance, leadership and vision, corporate citizenship, and workplace environment.

3.9 CONCLUSION Although agenda-setting effects primarily have been studied in the context of mass-media, the principal idea is the transfer of salience from traditional media to the Social Media context. Together, the five agenda-setting propositions provided a roadmap for this empirical research describing and explaining the influence of Social Media on the reputations of firms. Particularly emphasized by these propositions is that Social Media participation plays a great role in generating awareness, impacting According to Holtz, transparency is the degree to which an organisations shares the following with its stakeholders: Its leaders: “The leaders of transparent companies are accessible and straightforward when talking with members of key audiences”; Its Employees: “Employees of transparent companies are accessible to reinforce the public view of the company and to help people where appropriate”; Its values: “Ethical behaviour, fair treatment and other values are on full display in transparent companies”; Its culture: “How a company does things is more important than what it does. The way things get done is not a secret in transparent companies”; The results of business practices, both good and bad: “Success, problems, failures and victories all are communicated by transparent companies”; Its business strategy: “A company’s strategy is a key bases for investment decisions. Misalignment of a company’s strategy and investors’ expectations almost always results in disaster”. This is consistent with Fombrun and van Riel’s (2007) theory which posed that firms can be transparent about products and

stakeholder opinions and the online reputation of a firm. They also imply that by not sharing news on the Social Media channels an organisation fails to render itself important not only in the opinions of those stakeholders that use this medium as a primary source of information, but also lowers its chances of having an impact on the media, public and policy agendas. Currently more and more journalists are looking onto the Social Media sites for the next story. The more importance a story gains on the Social Media arena (i.e. it’s being frequently re-tweeted and commented on etc.) the bigger the chances that the story will come on the media agenda, further increasing the chances of it gaining importance on the public (outside the Social Media terrain) and subsequently the policy agenda. Allowing negative opinions to predominate will negatively prime the public opinion. It can therefore be argued that by not engaging Social Media a firm indirectly contributes to the formation of negative reputations online.

CASE STUDIES: WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ORGANISATIONS?

4 CASE STUDIES: WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ORGANISATIONS?

from different sectors, entrusted to communicate on the Social Media on

In order to be able to make recommendations for my employer on the topic, I

The EPO has started to participate in 2008. Currently the organization

first needed to assess whether the theories described above (see Chapter 3)

successfully employs a YouTube channel, broadcasting videos about the

have practical resonance. To understand what drives firms to engage this

Office and clips from key events like the European Inventor Awards; a Twitter

medium and what the benefits are that they gain from their efforts I have

account, linking to EPO job vacancies and events; and Facebook page

addressed three organisations that are already effectively deploying Social

providing news, photos, videos and announcements on the European Inventor

Media, mainly the European Commission (EC), the Dutch Safety Board (OVV)

Award. Mr Rainer Osterwalder, EPO’s Deputy Spokesperson, has gladly

and the European Patent Office (EPO), aiming to gain insight on my

shared his knowledge and experience on this topic on behalf of the

questions based on their practical experiences.

organisation.

The European Commission has started to engage the Social Media as early as

The Dutch Safety Board is active on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and forums.

in 2006 through their YouTube channel. In addition, at the time of this

“Social Media is the future”, the organization felt that they were missing out on

analysis (April 2011), the European commission was very actively participating

an area that was growing, “communications people have to do today’s work,

on Twitter and Facebook. The daily frequency of updates amounted on

with an eye on tomorrow” said Mrs Groenendal referring to the reason the

Twitter to 2 – 10 posts and around 1 post on Facebook. Moreover, the

Board has decided to engage the Social Media channels. Mrs Groenendal, the

Commission has a special blog section on their website rich in activity from

spokesperson at the Dutch Safety Board was my respondent for this research.

behalf of the organisation. One of four staff is specifically employed for Social Media analyses and data mining.

various commissioners, representatives and even few of the vice-presidents, such as Neelie Kroes, who since the beginning of 2011 has been blogging at least 3 times a month on various topics. Her blogs are gaining in popularity

4.1 BUILDING BRAND AWARENESS & ATTRACTIVENESS

with numbers of views ranging from 2000 to 4500. The Head of the Social Media Sector, Mr Bert van Maele, who was kind enough to offer to be interviewed for my research, runs the Social Media team which comprises four staff, and supervises an additional decentralised network of 60 employees

Consistent with my earlier described literature, one of the benefits of engaging Social Media mentioned by all three organisations during the interviews is creating awareness: “2, 3 years ago 50 % of the people asked whether or not they were aware of who the OVV is, had not heard of us”,

CASE STUDIES: WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ORGANISATIONS?

according to Mrs Groenendal. She claimed that this has drastically improved

place to be - 80% of young internet users in the EU27 are active on Social

since the Board engages in more proactive communication practices online.

Media (Eurostat, 2010). In the U.S., people aged 20 to 29 years spend more

At the EC Social Media is used to “try to give the European Commission a

time than other age groups using Social Media marketing (with 41% spending

human face, because a lot of people perceive it like a sort of “black-box”, so we

11+ hours weekly), followed by 30- to 39-year-olds (37% spending 11+ hours per

try to show that there are people working here that have specific interests that

week) (Stelzner, 2011). Easy access to youth can be beneficial for example

we go through the same motions as everyone else does.” Also at Europol the

when an organisation attempts to profile itself as an attractive potential

importance of Social Media for creating awareness is anticipated: “First of all

employer, but also as Mrs Groenendal mentioned: “Engaging youth also

Social Media creates greater awareness for the general public, it’s the friendly

establishes an image of the organisation as being modern, progressive and

face of the organization, the soft face of the organization, not the hard face”

developing“, an added value for those that pursue such an image. For

(Head of Unit, Europol).

intelligence agencies in particular engaging might be a great way of breaking out of the cliché image of being “boring” or “conservative”. Increasing the

Taking the generating of awareness of the company behind the brand a step

span of awareness regarding the great work that Europol does, might in turn

further, at the EC, Social Media is perceived as the way to reach the groups

inspire more young people to partake police vocations, and further their

outside the “Brussels bubble”, or as my interviewee put it, “The problem at the

careers towards the benefit and the safety of their nation.

moment is that Social Media coming from the headquarters gets still too much stuck in the “Brussels bubble”. We haven’t been able to get out of that, therefore

4.2 BUILDING TRANSPARENCY & TRUST

the future effort of the representation will focus on that.” Also, the spokesperson at the Dutch Safety Board mentioned that: “Social Media allows you to reach a group of people that cannot be reached in any other way. Youth’s primary information source is internet and they cannot be reached through traditional media.” So it seems that spreading awareness through Social Media can also help to reach a different stakeholder group, like the younger generations.

In the experience of the interviewed organisations Social Media seems to help build a transparent image and generate trust. My interviewee at EPO has repeatedly emphasized how Social Media enabled the organization to muster trust among important stakeholders or as Mr Osterwalder put it: “It’s about creating transparency and creating trust. Transparency is the first thing that public organisations, paid by tax-payers money, need to create”. Building trust among the tax-payers as a stakeholder group is particularly important for

This is in line with the existing research which shows that if a company is seeking to reach the younger generation in particular, Social Media is the

intelligence agencies, since this constituency indirectly holds their licence to operate and are most of the times the most distrustful group, as well as the

CASE STUDIES: WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ORGANISATIONS?

most invested group, since it is their safety the agencies activities are

Dutch Safety Board throughout their experience found that communicating

concerned with. My interviewee at EPO found that Social Media offers a great

legally releasable information is most of the time more than enough. The

means of building trust by specifically targeting through communication

content they release is mostly related to what investigations are about and

those stakeholders that are distrustful: “There are people who absolutely dislike

framework of those investigations: “I’ve learned that the public finds it useful to

what EPO does in certain areas” as the EPO spokesman put it, “but Social

know in which stage an investigation is. There are different stages: facts

Media offered the organisation a means of proactively seeking those out and

gathering, analyses, review period (for those involved in the accident so that

addressing them, inviting them around.” The European Commission employs a

they can respond), and then we have the publication phase when we inform the

similar approach, “You have to always analyse why you are perceived negatively

public. You should never tire to explain how things work, because then people

and then see who perceives you negatively” and depending on the level of

understand and develop patience toward the lengthy durations of the

influence of that person “invite them around or address them” in order to learn

investigations”, said Mrs Groenendal.

what caused the negative attitude and whether there’s something the organisation can do can to inspire a change in perception, as Mr van Maele

This is consistent with prior literature, arguing that it is the task of managers

suggested.

to provide explanations, rationalizations and justifications behind a company’s activities in order to gain trust (Pfeffer, 1981). The EPO does not

Having an effective means of creating dialogues and personal communication

expect that the stakeholders online will drastically change their attitude

with stakeholders, further seems to help the organisations I interviewed to

towards the organisation, but find it plausible that they might start to

dissipate stakeholders’ doubts, which is also positively impacting trust: “If

understand the organisation better and in turn develop more favourable

there are doubts about the work of your organisation, Social Media is a quick

opinions of the organisation. This resonates with the preconceptions and the

and easy way to personalise otherwise boring and impersonal messaging...We

hopes that Europol has towards this medium. Struggling with the inability to

want to build up a positive reputation for example by passing core messaging

address the (most of the time unjust) negative comments on the Social Media,

via these channels and limiting the damaging effect of some protesting against

the agency is hoping to be able to positively impact them by engaging the

our work by sending out clarifications through these channels”, said Mr

channel. The EPO spokesman claimed that even if people may still discern

Osterwalder during our interview.

“you can give them the feeling that you are open about what it is that you are doing and Social Media really helps in that respect.” Being open about

Dissipating stakeholders’ doubts further helps generate understanding, as well

corporate practices enables “the public to benefit from it. That’s a prime virtue

as create patience, which in turn contributes to the development of trust. The

[of Social Media] and creates trust”, according to Mr Osterwalder.

CASE STUDIES: WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ORGANISATIONS?

The fact that open sharing of information and networking facilitates either

mentioned that: “Transparency is often mistaken with betraying secrets.” In

affect-or cognition-based trust among key stakeholders is also in line with

the intelligence agencies’ field particularly “secrecy is a vital element—

prior research (van Halderen and Kettler-Paddock, 2011). As the EPO

perhaps the key element. Intelligence involves information, yes, but it is

spokesman’s quotations indicate and the Dutch Safety Board confirmed,

secrecy, too. For producers of intelligence, it is more about secrecy than

Social Media appears to be an important way for the organization to create

information” (Warner, 2007). Secrets, whether related to government or

such levels of trust. Especially for the public intelligence agencies that are

business, have the function of protecting valuable tactical, or strategic

most of the time perceived as secretive and operating in a covert mode,

informational assets and are valuable because they protect value (Dufresne

building these levels of trust could prove valuable. Introversion, distorting or

and Offstein, 2008). This value is protected by different levels of classification

concealing relevant information, avoiding to state or disclose facts, ideas and

against unauthorized disclosure in order to safeguard it against a use that

conclusions have been proven to cause lack of trust (Zand, 1972), create

would be contrary to its owner’s objectives (European Parliament study, 2010).

suspiciousness and increase the likelihood of misunderstandings and

The potential seriousness of the consequences of disclosure grows with the

misinterpretation (Westerlund, et al. 2009). To mitigate against the negative

level of classification of information, ranging from problematic, to extremely

effects of introversion, intelligence agencies could use the Social Media

serious and potentially compromising to national security. Sharing too much

channels to build cognition-based trust by for example publishing and

is therefore a major concern in intelligence agencies: “We should not go too

disseminating information about successfully completed operations, which

much in details on the internet. Avoid that risk. It [Social Media] can be too

would effectively prove their competence and reliability; as well as affect-

open for us [Europol]”, said the interviewed Head of Unit in the Operational

based trust, by for example using the channel as an early warning system

Department at Europol. “Yes this is a major concern not to give away too much

publishing “Wanted” announcements, or public safety advise on various

information. So we have to be sensible about the use of Social Media in order

topics.

not to expose the organization to the reputational damage and to avoid negative consequences” (Analyst, Europol).

4.2.1 DEALING WITH TRANSPARENCY IN THE INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES FIELD

The intelligence community largely invests time and financial resources in the Although the academic literature has repeatedly emphasized the importance

form of clearance approvals and checks, technological, formal and procedural

of transparency (Rawlins, 2009; Piotrowski, 2007; Ang and Brau, 2002; etc.),

controls in the day-to-day operations in order to maintain, safeguard, control

transparency is at the same time a delicate issue for intelligence agencies. In

and administer their system of “secrets”. Both inputs (e.g. cell phones and, or

line with prior research (Vaccaro and Fontrodona, 2010), my EPO interviewee

camera phones within Intelligence agencies’ facilities are prohibited) as well

CASE STUDIES: WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ORGANISATIONS?

as outputs are controlled (e.g. employees often possessing two different

to share absolutely everything about itself. Also my interviewee at the Dutch

computers, one with access to the internet and another only connected to the

safety board emphasized that this way of information sharing does not have

secure network, or USB devises being forbidden). But as we can learn from the

to breach secrecy-related issues: “[Disclosure] is no more of a limitation in the

WikiLeaks case, technology and policies might be able to moderate up to a

Social Media context then it is in the everyday work. Leaks of information could

certain level, but cannot reliably prevent information from being leaked.

happen anywhere. On Social Media people might be more careful then otherwise

"WikiLeaks is more of an HR and legal issue than a technology one.

verbally. Writing makes you think twice” (Mrs Groenendal, The Dutch Safety

Somebody who was trusted shared information he wasn't supposed to"

Board). Mr Osterwalder at EPO confirmed this as well. He claimed that the

(Modruson, F. CIO at Accenture, in Nash, 2011). In conclusion Social Media

organization can still share a lot of information, without having to give away

does not in itself lead to, or increase the risk of breaching of privacy.

secret information: “Social Media does not entail having to betray secrets about

“Disclosure is a risk that is not necessarily attached to Social Media.

the way you operate, or pursue certain cases or activities”, said Mr Osterwalder

Information can be disclosed on other channels. If anything – by participating

during our interview.

on Social Media channels Europol will have people in charge that will ensure that what is being posted is in line with the confidentiality guidelines, and

In conclusion, theory and case studies alike, maintain that if managed

people will think twice before posting. The people in charge of Social Media

correctly, intelligence agencies can engage in transparent communication

should be trained to avoid errors related to disclosure. Disclosure of

practices on Social Media channels without risking disclosure.

information which is classified, and should otherwise not be disclosed is a human error and should be managed at the process level” (Information security

4.3 GATHERING INTELLIGENCE

Officer, Europol). A third benefit of Social Media for intelligence agencies is its potential to Also from literature and the conducted interviews, we can infer that being transparent is beneficial for organisations and does not conflict with the secrecy aspect of the intelligence agencies. In his book “Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build their Brand” Holtz states that: “Being transparent does not require that you produce a never-ending sea of data and information” and that transparency “is not full disclosure.” Being transparent does not imply that an organisation has

gather intelligence information. This is an interesting finding, which has been less well studied by prior literature. Intelligence agencies can not only use Social Media to build awareness, transparency or trust, but can also proactively use it to get first-hand information from their stakeholders on intelligence cases that they are working on. For instance, in the investigation on the Turkish airlines plane-crash, on Wednesday 25 February 2009 the Dutch Safety Board received the first pictures of the plane-crash within

CASE STUDIES: WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ORGANISATIONS?

minutes of the accident through twitter. Another example is the Moerdijk

on operations that the agency is investigating will require that the agency to

case, when on 5 January 2011, at 19:35, a chemical plant caught fire. The

some extend shares, or posts information on those particular operations. This

organisation posted on Twitter that they needed images and eye-witnesses

in most cases is not possible due to the fact that the operations under

and “before you know it a lot of images and videotapes which were useful for the

investigation are at all times kept secret, even internally among departments

investigation starting to come in”, Mrs Groenendal shared. The Dutch Safety

and the information that is used for investigations is most of the time

Board is therefore rather positive on the use of Social Media for investigation

classified, as described in the previous sub-chapter.

purposes. Aside from the classification of information, another limitation to intelligence Using Social Media for this particular practice is also being extensively

agencies posting information on operations, is the fact that anything that the

employed by the U.S. law enforcement community. A survey conducted by

agency shares on the investigations that are conducted, could give unfair

the IACP among 728 U.S., Law Enforcement agencies in September 2010 on

competitive advantage to adversaries – the criminals involved in the

the use of Social Media, has concluded that 81.1% of agencies surveyed use

operations, who would then become aware that they are under observation

Social Media. 62.3% are using Social Media for crime investigations and 40%

and could alter their behaviour to deceive the observer (e.g. Europol’s

use it for soliciting tips on crime (IACP, 2010). Receiving tips from the

operations department). In psychological literature this is referred to as the

community are a common practice for the law enforcement. Social Media now

Hawthorne Effect, which poses that the behaviour of subjects changes when

helps facilitate this practice. Sophisticated tools are being developed in order

they are aware of being observed (Roethlisberger and Dickson, 1939).

to make it easier for the public and the police to interact online. One such

Criminals being aware that they are under investigation could lead to failed

example is tip411 program developed by the CitizenObserver Corporation.10

operations and is thus unproductive in the intelligence-led environment. In conclusion using Social Media for information gathering purposes is a

For intelligence agencies in particular, this open source of information

potential, albeit a limited benefit for Europol in particular.

gathering might appear as an important added value in theory, but in practice, it does have its caveats. These caveats are related to the earlier

From the European Commission however, I have learned of another approach

described ‘transparency – secrecy’ trade-off. Attempting to collect intelligence

to intelligence gathering that Europol and any other organisation can tap into. Mr van Maele mentioned that Social Media “demands that an organisation is

“Tip411” is a web-based notification tool which makes easy for citizens to provide immediate, anonymous tips and intelligence: http://www.citizenobserver.com

able to react quicker, it should adapt quicker, should be able to deal with comments and questions that people have. And that for an organisation as big

CASE STUDIES: WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ORGANISATIONS?

as the Commission - dealing with so many topics and which is hierarchical and

In addition to the above outlined benefits, the previously mentioned quote

sort of conservative - is very difficult.” Hence, Social Media is fundamentally

from my interviewee at EPO summarises the main conclusion of this chapter

influencing communication structures, but also operational business and

and that is that Social Media offers organisations a means of proactively

could be effectively used towards change management. Gathering user-

seeking the stakeholders with negative opinions out and addressing them and

generated information and communicating it to the decision-makers could

inviting them around. So, the general perception of the addressed

serve as an improvement driver. “Social Media is more about changing the

organisations is that more transparent communication practices through

organisation,” said Mr van Maele, “we try to use the Social Media in this way, to

Social Media help with managing stakeholders’ opinions of the company.

be able to use the information and adapt to the information.” Open-minded participation and ability to listen to constructive opinions, can guide firms through a learning curve. “Walking the talk” is the next step.

RESEARCH QUESTION 1-A What are the strategic benefits of Social Media for organisations in terms of managing stakeholders’ opinions of the company on Social Media? In this chapter I have detailed the results from the conducted interviews which have helped me identify the strategic benefits of using the Social Media for organisations and have answered my research sub-question 1a. The most salient benefits that have been identified are outlined in Table 4.1 below. Table 4.1: Overview of the benefits Benefit Building brand awareness and attractiveness

Case Study EC, OVV

Literature Stelzner, 2011;

Building transparency and trust

OVV and EPO

Talbot, 2007; McAllister, 1995; Chua et al. 2008; Tapscott and Williams, 2008;

Gathering Business and Law enforcement intelligence

OVV, EC

IACP, 2010;

DESK RESEARCH: HOW DO OTHER INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES ENGAGE SOCIAL MEDIA?

5 DESK RESEARCH: HOW DO OTHER INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES ENGAGE SOCIAL MEDIA?

Figure 5.1: Social Media Metrics

Existing academic literature and the conducted interviews have helped me better understand the benefits that organisations experience as a result of engaging their stakeholders through Social Media. To gain an industry specific insight, in this chapter I assess the strategies and effects of Social Media engagement, or non-engagement, of some the world's most prominent intelligence agencies, mainly: FBI, CIA, Interpol and Europol. The fact that all four have significantly differing styles of approaching the medium is a welcome coincidence, as it helps me get a better understanding of the impact of different strategies. I compare their contrasting levels of activity on the social networking websites, as well as assess the effects of their efforts.

The reasons that most commercial companies engage the Social Media are mainly to attract and keep customers, and improve sales. Measuring

5.1 HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT

effectiveness or the ROI of Social Media for this sector is therefore most of the time related, but not limited to:

product recommendations - which will

The current trends drive firms to want to define engagement metrics that will

impact sales; brand sentiment - indicating customer satisfaction; increase or

lead them to make better business decisions. The volume of Social Media

decrease in number of followers - or potential clients-base.

metrics is vast, differing not only between sectors (i.e. public versus commercial), but also among competitors in the same industry. Each

As my interviews show, the drivers behind the public sector's decision to

organisation therefore, depending on the motivations behind their Social

engage are slightly different. Public organizations, besides the need to stay

Media initiatives could have drastically different metrics. Moreover, according

abreast of the modern developments, most of the time engage Social Media to

to the Forrester report, written by Elliott et al. (2011), different internal

improve awareness around their products or operations and to influence

stakeholders are interested in measuring different data and therefore require

public trust. The most appropriate metrics for the public sector therefore are

different metrics.

the sentiment of the Social Media stakeholders' opinions, which will indicate the levels of trust and affect, and the stakeholders' expressed interest in the

DESK RESEARCH: HOW DO OTHER INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES ENGAGE SOCIAL MEDIA?

agencies' communication efforts, which is an indicator of the awareness

as negative, positive or neutral. The results of the sentiment analysis indicate

spreading effectiveness.

stakeholders’ opinions online about the agencies. H3: The most frequently used keywords by which an agency is

To test the propositions phrased in the Theoretical Framework (see pg. 14), I

referred to online will correspond to the top attributes that the

have formulated the following hypothesis:

agency wishes to be perceived by.

H1: More frequent engagement efforts will incrementally build stakeholders’ awareness of a firm on Social Media.

“Organizational identity expressions are important for managing the perceptions and subsequent intentions of external stakeholders”, as was found

The level of effort that an agency is investing in their Social Media

by a study conducted by van Halderen (2007). Organizational identity

engagement, is in this thesis measured by the total number of posts, Tweets

expressions are the ways in which firms express who they are as an

or blogs that an agency is communicating, studied by noting the frequency of

organization. The author posed that external stakeholder’ perceptions and

communication (e.g. number of posts per month) and the Social Networking

behaviours towards the organization are impacted by these “expressions”.

platforms where the agencies were active on (e.g. Twitter or Facebook). More

This counts tenfold on Social Media. Once an agency posts something on the

frequent communication usually requires more effort, time and human

Web, it will most likely be replicated, re-tweeted, or forwarded. Aside from

resources, which incurs more costs for an organisation. I therefore assume

this, search engines archive content and aggregators automatically duplicate

that a higher level of engagement, equals higher costs. The unit used to

it. Simply put: what goes online stays online. Firms must therefore invest

measure effort is the absolute number of posts.

great care into ensuring that what they communicate online is effectively expressing the firm’s identity.

The number of mentions - the number of times an agency's name is mentioned on the Social Media – was used in this research as the value to assess the

The set of particular attributes that are most frequently mentioned on Social

effectiveness of the awareness spreading.

Media about a firm, are assessed by the numbers of most frequently used

H2: Social Media engagement positively impacts stakeholder opinions online.

keywords that are used in the context of a firm’s mentions. The broadest range of rhetorical efforts of an organization that explain who the organization is,

Sentiment analysis or opinion mining served as assessor how people “feel"

what it stands for, what it does and why (Idem, pg. 6) are most concentrated

about an agency, its products or services (positive, negative, neutral),

in a firm’s Mission, Vision and Value statements. These should therefore

deducted from the content that they post online. The sentiment of a mention

contain the top attributes, or identity expressions, by which the firm wishes to

was measured by assessing the tone of its content, which was then categorised

be perceived. Ten Social Media top keywords have been cross-assessed against

DESK RESEARCH: HOW DO OTHER INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES ENGAGE SOCIAL MEDIA?

the contents of the Mission, Vision and Value statements of each agency in

Active on Twitter since June, 2009 and YouTube since September, 2010,

order to determine how efficient they are at positioning themselves by their

Interpol is communicating on these channels on average 24 times (6.2 times a

core attributes.

month). The initial data mining attempt for Interpol generated a large amount of mentions and only after deeper content analyses it became evident

5.2 RESULTS

that 61% of the total amount of mentions found online on Interpol is related to a band, with the same name “Interpol”. This leaves the agency with a total

Hypothesis 1 argued that more frequent engagement efforts will incrementally build stakeholders’ awareness of a firm on Social Media. A four months

of 160 relevant mentions (40 per month), i.e. mentions excluding the ones related to the band.

sample of all the efforts the agencies are making on all the platforms is detailed in Table 5.1 below. The second row outlines a four months sample (27/05/2011-27/09/2011) of all the mentions that each agency is generating in return.

Number Of Mentions

Europol is surprisingly not lagging far behind in terms of the number of mentions it generates, averaging to 149 mentions over the assessed period. Figure 5.2: Overview of efforts and mentions

Table 5.1: Dataset for engagement efforts (four months) Engagement Efforts

With a “0” activity level, i.e. no posts or content sharing from Europol itself,

FBI 420

CIA 76

INTERPOL 24

EUROPOL 0

308

274

160

149

The FBI is the most active of the four agencies on the Social Media. With Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts, the agency is on average sharing content 420 times over a period of four months (105 times a month). The agency also has the most numbers of mentions of all four, averaging to 308 mentions (77 per month). CIA’s activity level amounts to 76 posts, (19 posts a month), comprising mainly of videos and photos posted on YouTube and Flickr. Over the assessed period on average 274 posts can be found on Social Media mentioning CIA.

DESK RESEARCH: HOW DO OTHER INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES ENGAGE SOCIAL MEDIA? Figure 5.3: Efforts versus Mentions Table 5.2: Dataset for sentiment (four months) % of mentions (over four months) Negative

FBI

CIA

INTERPOL

EUROPOL

28%

Neutral

89%

70%

83%

92%

Positive

Figure 5.4: Negative & Positive + Neutral mentions (27/05/2011-27/09/2011)

FBI - the most active of the four agencies is generating most mentions. The CIA, Interpol and Europol’s results follow in a descending order. Even though the difference is not major, the above graph indicates that higher engagement efforts generate higher numbers of mentions. This supports Hypothesis 1.

Hypothesis 2 argued that Social Media engagement positively impacts stakeholder opinions online. This entails that the agencies that are engaging on Social Media will generally have more positive mentions online than those that don’t engage (e.g. Europol).

Contrary to the supposition of hypothesis 2, Europol, the least active agency of all four, has on average the most positive and neutral, and the least negative mentions online. This leads me to conclude that positive opinions on Social Media are not determined by whether or not an agency engages in

Table 5.2 below gives an overview of the percentages of positive, negative and

Social Media, neither is it influenced by more frequent participation.

neutral mentions. If hypothesis 2 is correct, the agencies that engage more frequently will have higher percentages of positive and neutral mentions, and lower percentages of negative.

Hypothesis 3 tested the degree to which the most frequent keywords by which an agency is referred to online will correspond to the top attributes that the

DESK RESEARCH: HOW DO OTHER INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES ENGAGE SOCIAL MEDIA?

agency wishes to be perceived by. Table 5.3 below details the top 10 keywords

5.3 ENGAGEMENT EFFECTIVENESS

each of the agencies is referred to online and the percentage of match between the listed keywords and the agenciesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Â Mission, Â Vision Â and Â Value Â statements (see annex ) (underlined are the keywords that matched and between brackets are the number of times the word was found back in the

Reducing â&#x20AC;&#x153;costsâ&#x20AC;? and increasing â&#x20AC;&#x153;profitsâ&#x20AC;? is the aim for maximised Social Media engagement effectiveness. To increase â&#x20AC;&#x153;profitâ&#x20AC;?, organisations will strive to increase positive reviews and lower the negative ones, at an optimum â&#x20AC;&#x153;costâ&#x20AC;? or effort. In order to compare the four engagement strategies and their

Mission, Vision and Value statements).

effectiveness, an equation has been devised by which effectiveness can be measured. Applying the attributes previously used in this research, the

Table 5.3: Top Keywords on Social Media FBI (62 months)

CIA (64 months)

INTERPOL (79 months)

EUROPOL (58 months)

Crittenton Murder

Iran Link

Interpol (x3) Niger

Europol (x3) European (x3)

Source Police Scandal Korybaker262626 Fraud Report Complaint Federal (x2)

Plot Petraeus Source Security David Intelligence (x1) Afghanistan News

Armour Dead Island Secretariat Drug Arrest Link Source

Data Report Police Agreement Information (x1) Europe (x2) Swift Crime (x4)

effectiveness of an engagement strategy can be expressed in function of the positive, neutral and negative mentions in percentage values. Below is the list of variables: đ?&#x2018;Ś = đ??¸đ?&#x2018;&#x201C;đ?&#x2018;&#x201C;đ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;?đ?&#x2018;Ąđ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;Łđ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018; , đ?&#x2018;Ľ = đ?&#x2018;&#x192;đ?&#x2018;&#x153;đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;Ąđ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;Łđ?&#x2018;&#x2019; Â đ?&#x2018;&#x161;đ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018;Ąđ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;&#x153;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018; , đ?&#x2018;Ľ = đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;˘đ?&#x2018;Ąđ?&#x2018;&#x;đ?&#x2018;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;&#x2122; Â đ?&#x2018;&#x161;đ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018;Ąđ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;&#x153;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018; , đ?&#x2018;Ľ = đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;&#x201D;đ?&#x2018;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;Ąđ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;Łđ?&#x2018;&#x2019; Â đ?&#x2018;&#x161;đ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018;Ąđ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;&#x153;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018; , where đ?&#x2018;Ľ , Â đ?&#x2018;Ľ Â đ?&#x2018;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018;&#x2018; Â đ?&#x2018;Ľ â&#x2C6;&#x2C6; [0: 1]. We know that the negative mentions can be expressed in function of the positive and neutral mentions with:

10%

Match with Mission, Vision and Values 10% 10%

50%

đ?&#x2018;Ľ = 1 â&#x2C6;&#x2019; (đ?&#x2018;Ľ + đ?&#x2018;Ľ )

(1)

Thus, the effectiveness could also be expressed in function of the positive and The cross-matching exercise indicates mixed support for hypothesis 3.

neutral mentions only.

Europolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Â results are well in accord with the hypothesis. For the rest of the

If we assume the effectiveness being a linear function of the two variables

agencies, matching keywords are uncommon. This further indicates a rather

positive and neutral mentions, we obtain the following equation:

non-strategic approach to Social Media by the three active agencies.

đ?&#x2018;Ś = đ?&#x203A;źđ?&#x2018;Ľ + đ?&#x203A;˝đ?&#x2018;Ľ + đ?&#x203A;ž

(2)

We know the following values of the effectiveness corresponding to some specific positive and neutral mentions values:

DESK RESEARCH: HOW DO OTHER INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES ENGAGE SOCIAL MEDIA?

đ?&#x2018;Ľ =1 đ?&#x2018;Ľ =0â&#x2021;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;Ś =1 đ?&#x2018;Ľ =0

(3)

đ?&#x2018;Ľ =0 đ?&#x2018;Ľ = 1 â&#x2021;&#x2019; đ?&#x2018;Ś = 0.5 đ?&#x2018;Ľ =0

(4)

đ?&#x2018;Ľ =0 đ?&#x2018;Ľ =0â&#x2021;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;Ś =0 đ?&#x2018;Ľ =1

Figure 5.5 shows the overall effectiveness of the Social Media practices of each (5)

We use the above mentioned three specific points in order to find the parameters đ?&#x203A;ź, đ?&#x203A;˝ Â đ?&#x2018;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018;&#x2018; Â đ?&#x203A;ž in equation (2), and we obtain: (5) Â đ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A; Â (2) Â â&#x2021;&#x2019; Â đ?&#x203A;ž = 0

of the four agencies. Here we can clearly see that more frequent engagement does not always imply more effectiveness. Especially if we consider the results of Interpol and Europol; even though they are the least active of the four, their strategies appear to yield the most effective results.

(4) Â đ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A; Â (2) Â â&#x2021;&#x2019; Â đ?&#x203A;˝ = 0.5 (3) Â đ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A; Â (2) Â â&#x2021;&#x2019; Â đ?&#x203A;ź = 1 Therefore, the effectiveness can be expressed in function of the positive and neutral mentions with the following equation: đ?&#x2018;Ś = đ?&#x2018;Ľ + 0.5đ?&#x2018;Ľ đ?&#x2018;&#x153;đ?&#x2018;&#x; đ??¸đ?&#x2018;&#x201C;đ?&#x2018;&#x201C;đ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;?đ?&#x2018;Ąđ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;Łđ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018; = đ?&#x2018;&#x192;đ?&#x2018;&#x153;đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;Ąđ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;Łđ?&#x2018;&#x2019; + 0.5 Â đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;˘đ?&#x2018;Ąđ?&#x2018;&#x;đ?&#x2018;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;&#x2122; Â đ?&#x2018;&#x161;đ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018;Ąđ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;&#x153;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018;

RESEARCH QUESTION 1-B How do other intelligence agencies engage Social Media to manage these opinions?

Engaging effectively is critical to the reputation of any organisation online: commercial or public. A well-constructed and then executed strategy is the key. In order to compare the engagement strategies of the four agencies I have

Figure 5.5: Effectiveness in function of engagement activity FBI, CIA, Interpol & Europol

mapped them according to their level of effort (Activity) and the results of their engagement (Effectiveness) over four categories: 1) Inactive & Effective (low activity, high effectiveness); 2) Inactive & Ineffective (low activity, low effectiveness); 3) Active & Effective (high activity, high effectiveness); and 4) Active & Ineffective (high activity, low effectiveness) (see Figure 5.6).

The matrix in Figure 5.6 gives a graphic representation of the answer to my research sub-question B. The textual explanation is further detailed below, reasoning the strengths and weaknesses, of each strategy. The main conclusion is that the four Intelligence-giants engage contrastingly different and yield very different and sometimes, unexpected results. I have not addressed whether or not these results are matching their objectives, but I can

DESK RESEARCH: HOW DO OTHER INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES ENGAGE SOCIAL MEDIA?

conclude that they are not. The results make me wonder whether or not some

the CIA falls into this particular quadrant. To save their presence, the CIA

of the studied agencies have a strategy in place at all, or if they are just

would need a more personalized and content-rich approach. Pictures can

engaging for the sake of being ´out there´?

speak louder than words, but as apparent in this case, they are not enough to

Figure 5.6: Social Media engagement Strategies Matrix

be effective on Social Media.

Active & Ineffective Many organizations ‘get by’ on Social Media, showing potential, but not exactly meeting tangible growth objectives. With 56 more mentions than the four agencies’ average a month the FBI is the most frequently mentioned and therefore the most known agency online. The agency’s effectiveness weakens however as soon as its effort level or activity frequency comes into the equation. The FBI communicates on average 32 more times compared to the other 3 agencies. There’s a clear disconnect between the effort that the agency makes and the results that it yields. Further research helped me identify why the agency’s high activity level is not ‘paying off’ accordingly. The FBI is employing a very clever, but rather impersonal approach to engagement. The Inactive & Ineffective The CIA’s engagement efforts are currently in the form of video’s and pictures on YouTube and Flickr. The agency does not facilitate comments and posts from public on these pages. Interactive functionalities are disabled. Stakeholders can view the content, but cannot interact. This kind of strategy

agency is using “dynamic news feeds that can be plugged into and read through various applications, readers, and webpages.”11 This may very well be the explanation behind the agency’s very active but not maximally effective engagement approach. Personalizing the content might be the solution, if the agency is to improve its strategy.

contradicts with the very nature of the Social Media, which is frequently referred to as “user-generated-content” and has interactivity as a main attribute. Impeding the user to generate content might be the reason behind the poor effectiveness of the agency’s engagement strategy. Moreover, being

Active & Effective Organizations that pursue the right engagement strategy efficiently thrive. They can only continue to set and achieve yet more challenging strategic

on Social Media and not welcoming, or allowing interactivity, cannot exactly be labelled as an “engagement” strategy and could be the explanation to why

11The portable FBI our newest social media initiatives

DESK RESEARCH: HOW DO OTHER INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES ENGAGE SOCIAL MEDIA?

targets, so as to sustain their effectiveness. Not the most popular of all

uncontrollable risks. This quadrant nonetheless, offers a clean sled and the

agencies, but nonetheless effective in terms of managing stakeholders’

promise of an uphill Social Media ride, when tapped into correctly.

opinions on the Social Media, the strength of Interpol’s strategy lies in the low efforts, but high effectiveness. Interpol’s posts range from general news about

RESEARCH QUESTION 1-C

the agency, such as: “INTERPOL appoints the RCMP's William J.S. Elliott as its Special Representative to the United Nations” 12; to videos about operations

Would Europol’s participation in Social Media more positively impact

conducted by the agency, as for example: “Operation INFRA-RED 2010” video

Social Media stakeholders’ opinions?

on their YouTube channel.13 Active on only two channels and communicating

What the results show is that neither participation alone, nor a higher level of

on average six times a month, the agency is clearly not aiming for “quantity”.

activity on the Social Media, will ensure positive stakeholder opinions. To

Moreover, the agency does not engage in conversation. Their strategy is based

expect that by just being “out there” an organization’s stakeholders will

on a one-way “push” method. In contrast to the CIA, Interpol combines visual

automatically reward its initiatives with positive opinions is a misperception.

communication efforts (i.e. videos) with textual ones (i.e. tweets). If the

The CIA’s ‘non-interactive’ approach, teaches us that the engagement needs

quality of their communication efforts would be strengthened with

to be invested and interactive. FBI’s ‘software-generated’ engagement, teaches

appropriate levels of identity expressions and their effectiveness improved by

us that personalized communication is important. From Interpol we learn

engaging in two-way conversations with their stakeholders, Interpol’s

that to continue yielding positive opinions, engagement needs to be well-

strategic placement would be a good starting point for a successful Social

planned and identity expressive. Positive stakeholder opinions are therefore a

Media engagement.

matter of interactive, well-planned, personalized, identity expression-rich and invested engagement. According to Van Halderen (2011), “Too many

Inactive & Effective

companies think a Social Media strategy means all they have to do is get

When firms fall into this quadrant their strategy can be categorized as a “no

themselves on to Facebook and Twitter and start saying things they presume

brainer”. By doing nothing they yield results – a dream strategy! But it is not a

people want to hear. That is blindly following the Social Media hype”, she

sustainable one. The stature that Europol acquired on Social Media has been

says. The findings of my research support Van Halderen’s claim that: “It is

more a matter of luck, than skill. Leaving the reputation of the organisation in

absolutely essential that managers at the top of organizations have a clear

the hands and at the mercy of others harbours unpredictable and

idea of how they want to position the company, what key messages they want to get across and in what kind of style” (RSM Outlook, 2011).

12 Interpol-ICPO. twitter.com/#!/interpol_icpo. August 18, 2011. 13 Interpolhq's channel. Www.youtube.com/user/interpolhq?ob=5#p/u/7/ugd0lmmbbbg.

CONCLUSION

6 CONCLUSION 2.

The more a set of particular attributes about a firm are mentioned on

On one hand, my research shows that Europol’s inactivity on Social Media has

Social media, the higher the chances are that the public will define the

not really threatened their online reputation. Thus, the idea that

firm by those attributes. It is therefore important for firms to increase the

organizations should be “on top of”, “consistently monitor” or “control” Social

amount of Social Media communication efforts around the attributes that

Media activities may be somewhat exaggerated. As my content analysis shows,

they desire to be perceived by.

compared to the FBI, the CIA and Interpol, Europol has over the past years, been the least active on Social Media. Stakeholders’ opinions of the

The sentiment around a particular attribute on the Social Media, will

organisation are nonetheless not that negative at all. In fact, the company

define the sentiment with which Social Media users will perceive that

fared much better in terms of positive stakeholder opinions compared to the

attribute. For an effective Social Media engagement in order to improve

other intelligence agencies that do put efforts into Social Media.

reputation it is therefore of great importance to increase the amount of positive mentions and lower the amount of negative ones.

The case studies on the other hand, suggest that other organisations do experience strategic benefits from pro-actively engaging in Social Media, such

The agenda of the Social Media users’ attitude and opinions about a firm

as: “building brand awareness and attractiveness”, “building transparency and

are formed based on the substantive and affective attributes associated

trust” and “gathering business and law enforcement intelligence”, which

with a firm covered on the Social Media. Meaning that when users express

Europol might be currently missing out on.

opinions, rather than basing them on the total “picture”, they commonly draw upon the bits of information that are particularly frequently

The Media Effects tenet moreover, suggests the following implications in

mentioned and have the strongest sentiment at the time.

regards to the effects of Social Media engagement on the reputation of an organisation: 1.

Transparent communication practices, by purposefully and strategically

To improve public awareness on the Social media it is important that a

communicating a corporate agenda on the Social Media will result in a

firm is frequently mentioned on the channels. Therefore, the more an

significant degree of correspondence between the attribute agenda of the

organization shares its news on the Social Media channels the more the

firm and the attribute agenda on the Social Media.

chances are that the news, and subsequently the organization itself will

Combining both conclusions leads in my view to the following implication

gain importance in the public opinion.

for Europol: So far, Europol’s reputation has not been threatened by its

CONCLUSION

inactivity on Social Media. Hence, I advise the management of Europol not

all. People talk about us and they do so in relatively positive terms and in

to ‘dive’ into Social Media from a ‘risk management’ perspective, but to

50% of the cases they do so using our identity expressions. The agency

pro-actively look at the possibilities that Social Media may have for

therefore, does not need to approach the medium from a “damage-control”

Europol and to carefully build a Social Media strategy that fits the needs of

perspective, but can better focus on leveraging the benefits from this

Europol. In the section below, based on the lessons learned during this

medium. By conducting such a measurement initiative, an organisation

research, I offer recommendations for building this strategy, which can be

will get a realistic understanding of where it currently stands in “the eye”

applied not only to Europol, but also other firms that are looking to

of the stakeholder that they are planning to engage. Moreover, such an

engage, or improve present efforts.

analysis will help define realistic timeframes and the level of “urgency” with which a firm should start engaging. This is a great starting point,

6.1 RECOMMENDATIONS

especially when designing the strategy, but also for future effectiveness measurements.

INITIATION It’s undisputable that Social Media is very fashionable. Firms however, should

Social Media monitoring tools are a good way to start studying the Social

abstain from making “a leap in the dark” just for the sake of being “in vogue”.

Media context. Even though the accuracy of the software is still debated

If nothing else, then at least to avoid wasting resources, prior to engagement,

(described in the “Research method” section) and being improved, it is

the following should be considered:

nonetheless a great way to gain directional insight. 79% accuracy is a good starting point and if more accurate data is needed, firms are encouraged to

Study the engagement context. Measuring “non-engagement” is

employ (human) manual analyses (similar to the way I have performed in

probably not the first thing that comes to mind when considering

this research).

participation. It is nonetheless of a great value to assess “what you are getting into”, as proven by the findings of my thesis. Prior to this analysis,

Benchmark. Benchmarking may seem a straightforward requirement

Europol was driven by urgency to leap into the Social Media in order to

during the execution of a strategy, but might not be such an evident factor

“keep up” and not be “left out” on the Social Media arena. This urgency

of importance in the initiation phase. Measuring an inactive firm’s

only grew when Europol was faced with a couple of negative comments

reputation on the Social Media and then benchmarking it against active

from the Social Media users, as described in the introduction. The context

competitors, will offer data that can be incorporated into a larger picture

analysis however, made it clear that the agency is not being left behind at

not only useful for evaluating the overall performance, but more

CONCLUSION

importantly, for understanding what levels of engagement are possible and necessary.

I encourage firms to conduct a Competitors’ engagement analysis. Here the effort of engagement could be assessed, versus its effectiveness. The

In Europol’s case, by looking at Interpol’s example on YouTube (67

effort of engagement can be measured by the number of a competitor’s

subscribers), the agency can chose to abstain from engaging this particular

outgoing communication efforts. “Followers”, “Likes” and “friends” are on

medium until it is better prepared for it. Video production is not a cheap

the other hand good indicators of effectiveness - the more the merrier

business, so an agency’s participation on YouTube better deliver

being the “rule of the thumb”.

significant amount of subscribers, otherwise the efforts invested into engaging are disproportionally larger than the value gained from it.

Moreover, a sentiment analysis for competitors can be conducted using

Moreover, a few videos might not be a good enough reason to start a

Social Media monitoring tools. This will give a more detailed overview of

whole YouTube channel. A “channel” by definition requires more

the preferred trends, or in other words of what users want and like to be

abundant contains. Therefore, a significant number of videos should be

informed about, how often and on which platforms.

available, if an agency is to be taken seriously. Also the agency is advised to consider the quality of the contents.

PLANNING AND DESIGN Using the data collected and the understanding formed in the Initiation

Another lesson learned for Europol in this case, is that “static”

phase, a firm can proceed to establish the scope of engagement and define a

engagement, where stakeholders are not offered the possibility to interact

plan of approach/the strategy. A Social Media strategy, will in most cases, be a

with a firm online, goes against the distinctive principles of Social Media

sub-set of an existing communication or marketing strategy. Whichever

and might be damaging to a firm’s reputation, as can be deducted from

strategy is the “parent” it should be driven by the business strategy (van Riel,

CIA’s example. This does not intend to imply that the multitude of

2012).

negative comments around the CIA is only as a result of their “static” approach to the medium. It is nonetheless pertinent that by not

Identify the work involved. Based on the context analyses an agency can

welcoming interaction, the agency is in this case missing out on the ability

identify how much damage-control will be necessary before it can reap

to steer the negative opinions towards more positive ones, as was

rewards. In Europol’s case, as the context analyses shows, the agency can

suggested by the case studies. So, if Europol engages, it is advised that they

only build on the already positive reputation online and will luckily have

do so openly and allow interaction on its Social Media platforms.

no particularly negative reputation to overcome. But this can vary per firm

CONCLUSION

and industry. So, an organisation should be prepared to invest the

consultancy and a network of patents experts are part of the Social Media

appropriate amount of effort based on the current context. A positive

team. This is meant to ensure “fluency” in the Social Media regularity as

context analyses will require less damage-control, meanwhile a more

Mr Osterwalder put it: “There are two or three people responsible for these

negative context analyses, might require more. What this entails is that an

[Social Media] accounts, and a larger group able to respond, so if a comment

agency with a negative reputation online, upon its leap into the Social

arrives that requires an expert response then we know which paths to follow,

Media might want to apply some corrective measures by addressing the

and comments will be responded to within minutes or hours at most.

negative perceptions first. This is usually more labour-intensive then the

Response on SM has to be very quick. If it’s too slow the message will lose its

regular communication efforts (Tweets, posts, messages about operational

credibility.”

results etc.) and is an important attribute for the Strategy formation or design.

At the Dutch Safety Board aside from the two communications employees that are part-time involved in Social Media, a team of investigators are

Measuring the current negative perceptions around the firm online with

encouraged to respond directly when circumstances call for it: “Everyone

the help with Social Media Monitoring tools can give a good overview of

working at the Board is a communicator” (Groenendal, OVV). At the

where and on what topics the agency should conduct corrective measures.

European

These findings should be taken into consideration in the firm’s Social

communications staff, one full-time analyst and a network of sixty staff

Media engagement strategy. “Cleaning the sled” will make the Social

from various sectors.

Commission

this

team

comprises

three

full-time

Media “ride” faster, smoother and more enjoyable. Depending on the size of your organisation and of the level of intended 4.

Setup the Social Media Team. Many communications managers assume

effort, the teams vary in size. It is however advisable to involve and trust

that adding “Social Media” as an “in between chore” to the list of other

operational experts in engaging the Social Media on behalf of the

tasks of any of the communication staff, will do the trick. This is a clear

organisation. They are a firm’s knowledge repository. For many

underestimation of effort. None of the organisations presented in the case

communications managers trusting operational staff to communicate on

studies had only one person executing the Social Media strategy, especially

behalf of the organisation is a “stretch”, but might be a worthy “stretch” to

not as an “in between chore”. Proper and effective Social Media

consider.

engagement practices are a “team-effort” as I have learned from all of the interviewed organizations. At the EPO, two media relations staff, a

CONCLUSION

Define the objectives. The objectives of the Social Media engagement

voice”, preferably organisation-wide and at least among the team of Social

strategy will be closely linked to the communication objectives of a firm,

Media advocates. Key messaging revolving around the corporate story (van

which in turn should be closely related to its business strategy (van Riel,

Riel and Fombrun, 2007) should be developed (if they haven’t been

2012).

developed in the communication strategy yet) and shared. This can be

Theory and Case Studies of the benefits that can be gained from engaging

achieved through effective internal communication practices and

with the user generated content can help define which Social Media

guidelines.

objectives can be leveraged online. In the commercial context “empowering sales” is one that is frequently referred to, but might be more

Define

the

KPIs

and

metrics.

In “Essentials of Corporate

interesting for one firm than for another. For Europol specifically, based

Communication” by Van Riel and Fombrun (2007), the authors propose a

on the agency’s business strategy and communication strategy, the main

model for defining corporate communications Key Performance Indicators

Social Media objectives will be to:

which will impact reputation. Adapted, this model serves as a “ready-to-

generate awareness,

use” tool for defining the KPIs for a Social Media engagement strategy.

b. establish the agency as a leader among police in EU and c.

Figure 6.1: Social Media KPIs (adapted from Van Riel & Fombrun, 2007)

improve trust among stakeholders online;

Define organizational identity expressions. Van Halderen suggests “orchestrating

the

organizational

identity

expressions

along

four

expressiveness principles”: Distinctiveness, Consistency, Sincerity and Transparency (pg. 137). To take Europol as an example, establishing the agency as a leader among police in EU will require identity expressions about the agency’s police coordination activities, such as this for instance, “Europol coordinates police operation against World's largest online paedophile ring” (Euroalert.net, March 2011). Different strategic objectives will require different KPIs and metrics. 7.

Develop a “shared voice”. In the Social Media context it is increasingly important that the organizational identity expressions gain a “shared

Defining a set of the most important ones for your organisation will help focus the strategy and attention on the most important outcomes.

CONCLUSION

EXECUTION AND CONSTRUCTION

further gives the negative message the chance to degenerate and become

9. Reduce bureaucracy. In conservative organisations bureaucracy can pose

more “toxic”, travel further and spread more. “Coming in as quick as

a risk to open and transparent communication practices online. Running

possible ensures that it’s not entirely one-sided and negative, as it would be

after signatures and other forms of prior approval, often distributed over

without your participation” (Groenendal, OVV). Making the way for

various organizations layers, stands in the way of the philosophy of the

information from an organisation’s “knowledge repository” to the digital

channel: “Social Media requires quick and prompt reactions,” (Groenendal,

realms as short and as straight as possible is therefore vital for a successful

OVV). Taking time for signatures and proofreading can cause significant

Social Media participation. The risk is clearly understood at Europol, “You

delay in response on Social Media. It only takes a click to tweet, share or

need to find ways to communicate in a very fast way. Decisions should be

blog a complaint or negative perception. By the time a company realises it,

made very fast and that of course is a challenge” (Female assistant in the

the problem has a big chance of having spread, and having turned public

operations unit, Europol). To mitigate this risk the Commission

and big. The inability to be quick and provide direct response when the

recommends extracting the Tweets and posts from “pre-agreed” material,

need for action is identified could prove a liability to the formation of trust

such as press releases, memos, speeches etc. which usually have to go

with the public for Europol when engaging Social Media. One example of

through the regular agreement procedures, “And then we tweet. We can go

damage caused by slow response is the Nestle versus Greenpeace case in

into the speech, into the memo, into the press release and we make the

2010, when the company was too slow to respond to an outcry from the

tweet, because it’s basically on agreed information”, said the Head of Social

NGO on their Facebook page, cantered around the use of palm oil in its

Media sector during our interview.

products. Extraction of palm oil leads to destruction of forests in Southeast Asia. At first, Nestle ignored the problem. This further fuelled the fire.

10. Customise the content per platform. To reduce time and effort some

Proceeding to attempt to delete the negative comments and argue with the

organisations practice “content recycling”, using the same content on all

users did not help the company. Instead of being part of the discussion,

Social Media platforms. Moreover, some practice what’s referred to as

Nestle was first too slow and then too defensive having turned the incident

“passive copying”: “Passive copying from the website to the Social Media is

into a fiasco for the brand.

not a right approach” (Male Analyst, Europol), “You have to keep it exciting and interesting” (Female assistant in the operations unit, Europol).

The Dutch Safety Board has noticed from experience that delayed responses are perceived as less credible, “The OVV tries to respond within

My interviewee at the European Commission recommends adapting the

an hour”, says the spokesperson. Waiting too long before responding

content to the channel it’s posted on, “Twitter has a different public than

CONCLUSION

Facebook. We don’t use Facebook for political communication, but we do

as the Spokesperson at the Dutch Safety Board put it when asked about

use twitter for political communications. Because there [on twitter] it is

how they handle negative comments and criticism made on Social Media

business-to-business and on Facebook we do have people that have an

towards the agency. My interviewee at the EPO, agreed: “For this type of

interest, but which are not political”, “we use videos in a different way on

communication you have to let go of control. You have to accept that people

Facebook than we do on the president’s website, for example. You have to

will be spontaneous, that they will respond to all kinds of aspects that they

differentiate [the content] per channel”, said Mr van Maele during our

might also be posting some inappropriate information and you have to deal

interview.

with it. Adopting this kind of attitude takes time; EPO is still in the process.” Organisations nonetheless wish to reserve the right to remove posts that

11. Avoid the “Streisand effect”. Attempting to hide or remove a piece of

contain for example profanity, hate speeches, personal attacks, spam or

information published on the internet can have the unintended

politically inappropriate content. Mr Maele, at the Commission, therefore

consequence of publicizing the information more widely, which is known

suggested that moderate moderation is ok, “You have to set rules for

online as the “Streisand effect”. This phenomenon acquired its name after

people,” “We say what we accept and don’t accept, so that people know what

the famous singer Barbra Streisand, in 2003 attempted to suppress

will be deleted.” The commission has a code of conduct policy published on

photographs of her residence. The attempt in itself ended up generating

its Social Media platforms and “If the comments are against the set policy,

further publicity of the photographs that the singer was so carefully trying

we delete it.”

to protect (Bernoff and Li, 2008). Along with many examples, a very vivid one is the Digg case study, detailed in Bernoff’s and Li’s book “The

12. Personalised communication is important. Automatically created

Groundswell”. Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, a social news website,

content pulled from a firm’s website into other Social Media sites might

chose to face a major lawsuit against all the giants from the movie industry

sound very appealing to some firms as it requires no extra work other than

(Disney, Sony, Microsoft etc.) instead of dealing with the “Streisand effect”

updating a website. The European Commission however strongly advised

which was spurred by unhappy users of the company’s website, due to a

not to use this kind of RSS feeds to generate the content as “People will just

post containing the broken encryption key for the high-definition DVD

un-follow” (van Maele, EC). The negative effects of automatically generated

format having been removed by Digg.

posts can be seen in the FBI’s case, which practices this approach. The agency publishes a lot of content, a lot more than the monthly average, but

The organisations interviewed for my case studies understand the danger of this phenomenon and advise that: “It is better not to delete information”,

their strategy, as I previously described, is not very successful. Learning

CONCLUSION

from their example, Europol is advised to adopt a “personalised engagement practice”.

14. Compare. Monitoring engagement on Social Media is already a great start. Information such as an “x” number of mentions, however, is meaningless outside the context of industry. By benchmarking, this information (e.g.

MONITORING AND CONTROLLING SYSTEMS

positive reviews and ratings) can become decision making differentiator

On Social Media, monitoring and controlling engagement is crucial. An

for a firm’s strategy, as well as a time and effort saviour.

engagement strategy can only be effective if the firm is “listening” to what the customer is saying and adapting to their needs. Listening “is the true strength

15. Adapt. Adapting the delivery method or communication style to

of Social Media that companies should be looking to leverage” (Van Halderen,

accommodate

2011).

engagement will increase the chances that the audience will better absorb

13. Measure the effects. As my case studies show, the notion of “measuring engagement” is still in its initiation phase and most companies are merely engaging, but not measuring the effects yet, or are just beginning to get more disciplined in this respect. Two out of the organisations presented in the case studies were not measuring engagement and one had only started measuring in in July 2011. Even so, this research presents some important lessons which might prove helpful for organisations that are just starting out, or that are already engaging but are not quite sure how well they are doing. The reason for this is the fact that Social Media as a communication, or marketing tool for firms, has started a while before monitoring software had started to be developed. Today however, there are plenty of affordable tools being perfected every day for this purpose (e.g. Engagor, Altherian SM2 etc.), therefore to capture the pool of information in the external spheres of customer engagement, firms will need to look beyond their internal reporting systems.

the

various

needs

detected

from

monitoring

the

the message, but also the likelihood that they will stick around and become a brand’s advocates. Ignoring will have the opposite effects. Figure 6.2: Stages & steps of developing & executing a Social Media strategy

CONCLUSION

6.2 RESEARCH LIMITATIONS

Career trends. The limitation described above, I realised is leading to the development of a new career-trend and mainly the one of the Social Media

Using sentiment analysis as assessor of reputations was appropriate for this study given my intend in finding whether or not more active participation generates more positive opinions on Social Media. Future research should examine other attributes such as numbers of followers or fans, for example, which are also indicative of a firm’s favourability and effectiveness on Social Media.

Analyst, who is hired to overcome the AI limitations. Aside from psychology or social studies, this role requires a large set of skills, such as languages and data mining skills. Moreover, I anticipate that the Social Media careers might further branch into roles such as: Social Media Reputation managers, Strategists and Spokesmen. A study of the career and skills developments as a result of the technological and communications movements would be very useful to better prepare employers, education providers and job-seekers alike.

Moreover, looking only on Social Media for reputation trends around firms does not take into account the whole “picture”. What people talk about on the digital platforms is highly influenced by what happens “outside” the Social Media terrain. A prior reputation-, general events- and traditionalcommunication-practices analysis would have been an added value. It is recommended that future Digital Reputation research is conducted hand in hand with Traditional Reputation Analysis.

Thought Leadership. Social Media provides open and easy access to an abundance of information and sources for foreknowledge. An interesting application hereof, that I would have liked to address in research is Thought Leadership. Organisations developing novel points of view (NPOVs) and showing concern, by driving debates around major societal issues, tap into the potential of positioning themselves as Thought Leaders (Kettler-Paddock and van Halderen, 2011). Social Media makes it increasingly easy to spot the major

6.3 FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence and mainly human sentiment prediction is gaining momentum in the current hyper-connected society. There’s an abundance of software being developed to supply this particular demand. Throughout this research however, through numerous tests, but also through discussions with developers and consumers alike, I have been repeatedly faced with the demand from consumers on one hand and the limitations in accuracy of the current tools, on the other. Never before has the study of this particular topic been as exciting and as urgent.

issues affecting society today, concentrating emerging trends just a couple of clicks away. Social Media as a driver or source of Thought Leadership is therefore an interesting topic for future research.

CONCLUSION

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CONCLUSION

ANNEXES ANNEX 1: DATA MINING TOOLS Figure 6.3: Screenshot of the SQL database interface built for data mining

Figure 6.4: Screenshot of “SocialMention”

CONCLUSION

ANNEX 2: INTERVIEW PROTOCOL Table 6.1: Interview protocol INTERVIEWPROTOCOL Time (20-45 minutes) INTRODUCTION Thank you for your cooperation on my research. I’m conducting this Master research on behalf of the Corporate Communication Unit at Europol, supervised by the Erasmus university. Social Media as a Communication Channel for Businesses “70% of small and medium businesses actively use social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to promote themselves”, shows a research from Access Markets International Partner, conducted in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, France, Germany, UK, China, India, Korea, and Australia. 67% of the top 100 Dutch companies have an established Social media presence, according to a research conducted by Social Media Monitor in the Netherlands in 2010. More and more businesses are using social media to get in front of their target audience and to create awareness. According to Forrester Research’s most recent Interactive Marketing Forecast, social media marketing will grow at an annual rate of 34% -– faster than any other form of online marketing and double the average growth rate of 17% for all online mediums. Interview Purpose My study focuses on identifying the benefits of creating a Social Media presence for organizations. The interview will approximately last 45 - 60 minutes. I

III

MEANING AND TERMINOLOGY For the purpose of this interview I define Social Media as a group of new kinds of online media, which share most or all of the following characteristics: Participation, Openness, Conversation, Community and Connectedness. Examples of social Media Platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin. Your organization and the use of social media Can you tell me something about your organization and what it does? Does your organization engage Social Media for marketing/communication practices? How many employees work at …? How many employees work in your communication unit or department? How many human resources are employed for social media purposes? Which Social Media channels are used by your organisation? How often does your organisation communicate through social media? Do you measure the effects of your participation? How do you generate statistics? Do you have a strategy for targeting particular stakeholder groups? What are the purposes of social media for your organisation? Does your organisation handle classified information? Benefits of Social Media What are the benefits that you have been experiencing due to your social media presence? Please give examples where possible.

Has social media had an effect on your media coverage? Has your social media presence had any effect i.e. on the public trust, awareness, and reputation? In what way? Requirements What are according to you essential requirements for an organisation to build and manage a good Social Media Presence? For each mentioned requirement: Could you explain why this requirement is important?

ANNEX 3: VISION, MISSION & VALUES Table 6.2: FBI Vision, Mission & Values Mission The FBI’s national security mission is to lead and coordinate intelligence efforts that drive actions to protect the United States. Our goal is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the threats and penetrate national and transnational networks that have a desire and capability to harm us. Such networks include: terrorist organizations, foreign intelligence services, those that seek to proliferate weapons of mass destruction, and criminal enterprises. In order to be successful, we must understand the threat, continue to integrate our intelligence and law enforcement capabilities in every FBI operational program, and continue to expand our contribution to the Intelligence Community knowledge base. Because national security and criminal threats are often intertwined, our ability to integrate intelligence and investigations makes us uniquely situated to address our nation’s threats and vulnerabilities. Our Mission As an intelligence-driven and a threat-focused national security and law enforcement organization, the mission of the FBI is to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners. Our Priorities The FBI focuses on threats that challenge the foundations of American society or involve dangers too large or complex for any local or state authority to handle alone. In executing the following priorities, we will produce and use intelligence to protect the nation from threats and to bring to justice those who violate the law. 1. Protect the United States from terrorist attack 2. Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage 3. Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes 4. Combat public corruption at all levels 5. Protect civil rights 6. Combat transnational/national criminal organizations and enterprises 7. Combat major white-collar crime 8. Combat significant violent crime 9. Support federal, state, local and international partners 10. Upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI's mission

CONCLUSION

Our People & Leadership: On September 30, 2011, we had a total of 35,576 employees. That included 13,900 special agents and 21,676 support professionals, such as intelligence analysts, language specialists, scientists, information technology specialists, and other professionals. Learn how you can join us at FBIJobs.gov. For details on our leadership, see the FBI Executives webpage. Our Locations: We work literally around the globe. Along with our Headquarters in Washington, D.C., we have 56 field offices located in major cities throughout the U.S., nearly 400 smaller offices called resident agencies in cities and towns across the nation, and more than 60 international offices called “legal attachés” in U.S. embassies worldwide. Our Budget: In fiscal year 2011, our total budget is approximately $7.9 billion. Our History: The FBI was established in 1908. See our History website and How the FBI Got its Name for more details on our evolution and achievements over the years. Our Motto: "Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity." Learn about the origins of this motto. Our Core Values  Rigorous obedience to the Constitution of the United States;  Respect for the dignity of all those we protect;  Compassion;  Fairness;  Uncompromising personal integrity and institutional integrity;  Accountability by accepting responsibility for our actions and decisions and the consequences of our actions and decisions; and  Leadership, both personal and professional.

Table 6.3: CIA Vision, Mission & Values Vision: One Agency. One Community. An Agency unmatched in its core capabilities, functioning as one team, fully integrated into the Intelligence Community. Mission: We are the nation’s first line of defense. We accomplish what others cannot accomplish and go where others cannot go. We carry out our mission by: Collecting information that reveals the plans, intentions and capabilities of our adversaries and provides the basis for decision and action. Producing timely analysis that provides insight, warning and opportunity to the President and decisionmakers charged with protecting and advancing America’s interests. Conducting covert action at the direction of the President to preempt threats or achieve US policy objectives. Core Values: Service. We put Country first and Agency before self. Quiet patriotism is our hallmark. We are dedicated to the mission, and we pride ourselves on our extraordinary responsiveness to the needs of our customers. Integrity. We uphold the highest standards of conduct. We seek and speak the truth—to our colleagues and to our customers. We honor those Agency officers who have come before us and we honor the colleagues with whom we work today. Excellence. We hold ourselves—and each other—to the highest standards. We embrace personal accountability. We reflect on our performance and learn from that reflection.

Table 6.4: Interpol Vision, Mission & Values Vision and mission: The vision – what INTERPOL aspires to achieve "Connecting police for a safer world". Our Vision is that of a world where each and every law enforcement professional will be able through INTERPOL to securely communicate, share and access vital police information whenever and wherever needed, ensuring the safety of the world's citizens. We constantly provide and promote innovative and cutting-edge solutions to global challenges in policing and security. The mission – what INTERPOL does to achieve its vision "Preventing and fighting crime through enhanced international police co-operation" We facilitate the widest possible mutual assistance between all criminal law enforcement authorities. We ensure that police services can communicate securely with each other around the world. We enable global access to police data and information. We provide operational support on specific priority crime areas. We foster continuous improvement in the capacity of police to prevent and fight crime and the development of knowledge and skills necessary for effective international policing. Table 6.5: Europol Vision, Mission & Values Vision, Values: As the European Union’s law enforcement agency, Europol’s mission is to support its Member States in preventing and combating all forms of serious international crime and terrorism. Its role is to help achieve a safer Europe for the benefit of all EU citizens by supporting EU law enforcement authorities through the exchange and analysis of criminal intelligence. Large-scale criminal and terrorist networks pose a significant threat to the internal security of the EU and to the safety and livelihood of its people. The biggest security threats come from terrorism, international drugs trafficking, trafficking in human beings, counterfeiting of the euro currency and payment cards, fraud, corruption and money laundering as well as other activities related to the presence of organised crime groups in the economy. New dangers are also accumulating, in the form of cybercrime, VAT fraud and other sophisticated crimes which abuse modern technology and the freedoms offered by the EU internal market. All of these have been declared priority areas by the European Union’s Council of Ministers. Europol’s vision is to contribute to a safer Europe by providing the best possible support to law enforcement authorities in the Member States. It will achieve this by delivering a unique set of operational services for the European Union, developing as the principal: • Support centre for law enforcement operations • Criminal information hub, and • Centre for law enforcement expertise In line with our mission and vision, we attach importance to the following five values which best characterise the culture of Europol and the work of its people: • Integrity • Accountability • Initiative • Teamwork • Effectiveness

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