Have you followed the progress in the War against ISIS in Syria? They use tablets to map the battlefield progress and to communicate through.
The maps can be redrawn Daily or Hourly with precision.
And social media can be used to bypass the Mass Media sensors. I’ve see it done and have participated in that. It is a powerful tool, but can be used for good or bad.
The problem? Ultimately they are only as good as the motives of those who use the tools.
I have some personal experience “war stories” that support what we are discussing. And I have a number of friends who use it daily for good purposes.
I started using Twitter while chasing news coming from inside Iran during the revolt about the stolen election in 2009. It looked like the young people with smart phones were going to pull it off, until the Mullahs hired some foreign techs to overcome the Haystack software that someone here in Texas wrote to prevent the location of the users by the cell phone companies. They arrested over 2,000 young people, many were never seen again. It still makes me sad to look at my time line from then and see the number of accounts I talked to that appear no longer active accounts, un-highlighted text only.
This is the world we live in.
What we see called news in the US is far too often really only propaganda. Very sobering thought.
Clandestine military portals into social media could end up being essential but that’s not to say that such tools don’t already exist and are currently in use.