Announcing War 2.0, a Medill examination of social media's role in modern warfare and military intelligence

We at the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative are pleased to present National Security Zone: War 2.0, a special report by NSJI Carnegie Fellow Sharon Weinberger, who spent the six months investigating social media and its opportunity to predict and perhaps even influence, future international events.

The Pentagon is now funding efforts to develop models that can predict rising insurgencies, or even identify ways to undermine covert terrorist networks. Military-funded researchers and private companies are looking at how to apply these models to cell phone records, online social networks, and data collected from numerous other online and public sources. This burgeoning field, which we call “War 2.0,” is a fast growing, but little examined phenomenon.

War 2.0 includes extensive original research on the growth of this field and catalogues the research projects run by various parts of the national security community; reports on how they’re being used operationally; and shows the connections between the entities funding and performing work in this burgeoning area.

Whether such efforts are successful or not, they are likely to influence national security strategy in the years ahead. See the complete package.

National Guard, Reserve not adequately served by military health care system, Medill students find in 3-month investigation

A three-month investigation by a team of Medill student reporters has found significant gaps between the health care and support for the 665,000 National Guardsmen and Reservists who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and their active-duty counterparts.

The project, called Hidden Surge, found that many have been hastily channeled through a post-deployment process that has been plagued with difficulties, including reliance on self-reporting to identify health problems. These service members face unique challenges and report higher rates of some mental health problems and related ills than active-duty troops.

Work by a team of 10 Northwestern Univesrity students in Medill’s graduate journalism program was published Feb. 15 in The Washington Postand is available on the Medill’s Hidden Surge site.  Students interviewed more than 80 current and former military and health officials and experts, and National Guard and Reserve troops and their families, and reviewed scores of official documents and reports. They traveled to military bases, National Guard installations and medical centers in nine states to do on-the-ground reporting.

The run-up to War 2.0

Two of our Medill National Security Journalism Initiative colleagues have launched a blog as prelude to a new project — War 2.0 — that will launch in January. 

In early 2012, War 2.0 will present original research on the growth of this field to lay the groundwork for future news reporting. Until then, this site will function as a blog, highlighting examples of network science in the news and across the Internet about how new social-networking tools are spurring a revolution in national security thinking that go well beyond merely Facebook and Twitter.

The War 2.0 project is part of NSJI’s Carnegie Corporation-funded fellows program. Seasoned national security journalist Sharon Weinberger is the fellow doing the reporting for War 2.0. She’s an author, reporter for Wired’s Danger Room  and former defense analyst.