Social Media Intelligence (Virtual Course)

Open enrolment and in-house options available

Our Social Media Intelligence course will help you find and monitor the sources, topics and targets of interest to you using low-cost / no-cost solutions. We'll demonstrate how to harvest data from popular social networks discretely and without jeopardising your identity. We'll also show you how to leverage the insights, signals and analysis provided by a rapidly growing constellation of blogs, newsletters and communities.

There are currently no dates planned for this course. Register your interest for future dates or enquire about in-house options.

Course Outline

Introduction and Requirements Planning 

Introduction to Social Media Intelligence

  • Introduction to social media: history and evolution
  • Introduction to social media intelligence
  • A typology of social media sources
  • A typology of SOCMINT strategies

Requirements Planning

  • Defining your intelligence requirements
  • Building and maintaining your keyword index
  • Working with hashtags and emojis

Setup and Security

  • Browser set up and configuration
  • Essential browser extensions
  • AI workplace setup
  • OPSEC for SOCMINT practitioners

Working with Blogs and Microblogging Platforms

Working with Blogs

  • Blog / newsletter discovery
  • Working with major blogging platforms
  • Monitoring a blog's content
  • Mapping a blogger's online footprint
  • Analysing a blogger's reach and influence

Working with Microblogging Platforms

  • Introduction to microblogging
  • Microblogging platforms as intelligence networks
  • Microblogging platforms as search engines
  • Searching and monitoring Bluesky
  • Searching and monitoring Threads
  • Searching and monitoring Mastodon


Monitoring Popular Social Networks

Working with Western Social Media Channels

  • Generic source / profile discovery guidance
  • Finding and monitoring Instagram profiles
  • Finding and monitoring TikTok profiles
  • Finding and monitoring Facebook pages
  • Finding and monitoring Telegram channels

Working with Non-Western Social Media Channels

  • Mapping the world's social media preferences
  • Finding and monitoring non-Western channels
  • Case study: VK, Dzen, Rutube
  • Case study: Sina Weibo, Bilibili, Douyin
  • Working with data scrapers

Monitoring Online Communities

Working with Communities and Forums

  • Finding and monitoring:
    • Online communities
    • Forums and discussion boards
    • Reddit channels
    • Chan sites
    • Discord channels
  • Scraping community data
  • Analysing the data for insights


Videos and Podcasts

Working with Video Sharing Platforms

  • Working with popular video hosting sites
  • Finding video content / channels via the surface web
  • Finding video content / channels via the social web
  • Monitoring video platforms, channels and users
  • Generating video transcripts and summaries

Working with Podcasts

  • Finding podcast channels via the web
  • Working with podcast directories
  • Monitoring podcast channels
  • Generating transcripts and summaries
There are currently no dates planned for this course. Register your interest for future dates or enquire about in-house options.

Course Details

Who is this Course For?

This course is intended for anyone engaged in online research, including intelligence, security and law enforcement personnel, journalists, investigators, cybersecurity practitioners, and business analysts.

How You Benefit

On completion of this course you will have the ability to:

  • Clarity for your social media intelligence requirements
  • Build a web-based media monitoring dashboard
  • Monitor a global network of social media sources
  • Process the flow of realtime information
  • Use AI tools to support data analysis
  • Optimise your organisation’s monitoring efforts

What You Receive

As a participant on this course, you will receive:

  • A certificate of completion
  • A full set of course slides / user guides in PDF
  • Templates to support requirements planning
  • Templates to support keyword indexing
  • Tip sheets and cheat sheets to enable rapid learning
  • Six months of post-course support


Course Fee

EUR 1,300

Course Prerequisites

The course assumes you are familiar with generic OSINT workflows (requirements planning, keywords indexing, data collation, etc.) and have a good working knowledge of major search engines. We also assume you are familiar with the principles of online security. If not, we recommend that you first complete our OSINT: Foundations program.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

To participate, you will need:

  • A Windows, Mac or Linux-based desktop or laptop computer
  • A Google / Gmail account
  • Google’s Chrome Browser

A full list of technical requirements will be sent to you on registration.