Social Media Investigations (Virtual Course)

Open enrolment and in-house options available

Our 5-day Social Media Investigations course will show you how to investigate individual profiles and communities active on social media. We'll walk you through a broad range of investigative strategies to interrogate social media profiles, analyse their content, and determine their influence and reach. We'll also guide you through platform-specific strategies, demonstrating where and how tools can be used for maximum effect.

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

Course Outline

Name and Username Investigations 

Requirements Planning

  • Defining your target
  • Defining your intelligence requirements
  • Building an investigative checklist
  • Legal and ethical considerations

Setup and Security

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

Name and Username Investigations

  • Introduction to footprinting
  • Investigating names and usernames
  • Working with people search tools
  • Working with research bots
  • Working with breached data

Investigating Social Media Profiles I

Investigating Posts and Content Identifiers

  • Mapping friends and followers
  • Indexing profile identifiers
  • Scraping profile data
  • Finding third party links
  • Building a profile timeline
  • Analysing profile content using AI

Investigating Social Media Profiles II

Investigating Profile Content

  • Investigating a user's posts
  • Investigating a user's images
  • Investigating identifiers
  • Investigating a user's connections
  • Investigating hidden / deleted profiles
  • Analysing a user's influence and reach

Platform-Specific Investigative Strategies

Investigating Popular Social Networks

  • Generic guidance for platform investigations
  • Case Study: Telegram
  • Case Study: Facebook
  • Case Study: Instagram
  • Case Study: LinkedIn
  • Case Study: Twitter / X
  • Case Study: Discord

Investigating Communities and Groups

Investigating Online Communities

  • Finding leading communities
  • Scraping and surveying community content
  • Analysing community foci and concerns
  • Analysing community demographics
  • Analysing community dynamics
  • Analysing tone, language and sentiment
  • Analysing key actors and influencers
  • Investigating external links and mentions
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?

The course is designed for anyone working in an investigative role. This includes security, intelligence and law enforcement professionals, lawyers, fraud investigators, and cybersecurity professionals.

HOW YOU BENEFIT

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

  • Define your investigative requirements
  • Maintain the necessary level of security
  • Investigate names and usernames
  • Investigate social media profiles and their content
  • Investigate specific social media platform

WHAT YOU RECEIVE

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

COURSE FEE

EUR 1,900

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

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