Air Force research: How to use social media to control people like drones

The Department of Defense has invested millions of dollars over the past few years investigating social media, social networks, and how information spreads across them.

While Facebook and Cornell University researchers manipulated what individuals saw in their social media streams, military-funded research -- including projects funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Social Media in Strategic Communications (SMISC) program -- has looked primarily into how messages from influential members of social networks propagate.

One study, funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), has gone a step further. The research demonstrates that the mathematical principles used to control groups of autonomous robots can be applied to social networks in order to control human behavior.