Analysts at the CIA’s Open Source Center, headquartered in Virginia, are following social media to help gauge world opinion. The center was created in 2005 in response to a specification recommendation by the 9/11 Commission. Although the center itself has been around for several years, an Associated Press particle from 2011 revealed that OSC is now following a variety of social media sources, particularly Twitter and Facebook. “The center had started focusing on social media after watching the Twitter-sphere rock the Iranian regime during the Green Revolution of 2009, when thousands protested the results of the elections that put Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in power,” the AP reported. CIA officials say that analysts at the center follow everything form Internet chat rooms to blog posts.
Source: Associated Press