When used effectively by civil institutions, particularly security and information securityagencies, social media may be a powerful tool for ensuring national security and achieving a state’s strategic goal of securing the security architecture. It would also raise social awareness and strengthen democratic participation.

• While social media has the ability to endanger national security, it also has the potential to significantly improve national security and help the government.
• The use of social media by governments as a warning or pattern tool is one of the fastest-growing applications. By collecting and analysing messages as a surveillance tool, the government can detect early signsof any unfriendly or potentially destructive behaviour, allowing it to anticipate events that could jeopardise national security.
• Another important way in which the government makes use of social media is as a tool for institutional communication. Social media can help government institutions collaborate more efficiently by increasing communication and openness.
• The utilisation of tools such as advanced analytics and social media can provide authentic knowledge that can be used to produce actionable information.
• It can be used for successful policing and communication. It includes strategies such as leveraging social media platforms such as Facebook, Whatsapp, and Twitter to aid investigations and gather information on offenders, crowdsourcing to aid investigations, and using photo-sharing sites such as Flickr to publish photographs of riot perpetrators captured on CCTV or mobile phones.

Social media can be used not only to share information, communicate, and collect data,analyse social and political dynamics, and forecast financial and economic trends, butit can also be used to describe events, model reality, influence perceptions of a scenario,a problem, or an individual, and influence decisions and behaviours.