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Volume 50
Number 1
2022
ISSN 2224-0020 (online) | ISSN 1022-8136 (print) scientiamilitaria.journals.ac.za
ARTICLES
Psychological proles of resilience in extreme environments: Correlating
measures of personality and coping and resilience
Charles Van Wijk
Social media intelligence: The national security–privacy nexus
Dries Putter and Susan Henrico
Beyond African Pride: Corruption mechanisms in the Nigerian Navy and
maritime sector
Akali Omeni
Towards a project management framework for ICT projects in defence
institutions
Sean Filmalter and Rigard Steenkamp
Role of moral foundations in the nuclear disarmament of South Africa
Arunjana Das
‘Disgusting, disgraceful, inconsequential and dirty renegade?’: Reconstructing
the early life and career of Anglo-Boer War combatant and war prisoner
‘Artie’ Tully, 1889–1910
Hendrik Snyders
BOOK REVIEWS
Military strategy: A global history (Jeremy Black)
David Jacobs
Blood money: Stories of an ex-Recce’s missions as a private military
contractor in Iraq (Johan Raath)
Carl Punt
Prisoner 913: The release of Nelson Mandela (Riaan de Villiers and Jan-Ad
Stemmet)
Willem du Plessis
A military history of the Cold War, 1944–1962 (Jonathan M House)
Jan-Ad Stemmet
Empire of destruction: A history of Nazi mass killing (Alex J Kay)
Anr Delport
Apartheid’s black soldiers: Un-national wars and militaries in Southern Africa
(Lennart Bolliger)
Evert Kleynhans
Scientia Militaria
South African Journal of Military Studies
Editor: Dr Evert Kleynhans
Book Review Editor: Anri Delport
Assistant Editors: Prof. Abel Esterhuyse
Prof. Ian Liebenberg
Dr Fankie Monama
Dr Raymond Steenkamp-Fonseca
Financial Manager: Mr Andries Fokkens
Editorial Secretary: Mr Evert Jordaan
Editorial Advisory Board
Prof. Francois Vreÿ
Security Institute for Governance and
Leadership in Africa
Stellenbosch University
Prof. Lindy Heinecken
Department of Sociology
Stellenbosch University
Dr (Brig Gen) Gerhard Kamer
Director Army Reserves
South African Army
Prof. John Laband
Department of History
Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
Prof Zoltán Rajnai
National Cyber Coordinator of Hungary
Óbuda University, Hungary
Dr David Vogel
Doctoral School for Safety and Security
Sciences,
Óbuda University, Hungary
Prof. Ian van der Waag
Department of Military History
Stellenbosch University
Prof. Bill Nasson
Department of History
Stellenbosch University
Prof. Theo Neethling
Department of Political Science
University of the Free State
Prof. André Roux
Institute for Futures Research
Stellenbosch University
Prof. Shrikant Paranjpe
Department of Defence and Strategic
Studies, Pune University, India
Prof. Hussein Solomon
Department of Political Science
University of the Free State
Prof. Vladimir Shubin
Institute for African Studies
Russian Academy of Sciences
Prof. Isabelle Duyvesteyn
Utrecht University
Dr Theo Brinkel
Netherlands Defence Academy
ISSN 2224-0020 (online); ISSN 1022-8136 (print)
The Editor, Scientia Militaria, Faculty of Military Science (SA Military Academy),
Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X2, Saldanha 7395, South Africa
Contents
Scientia Militaria
Volume 50
Number 1
2022
From the Editor i
ARTICLES
Psychological proles of resilience in extreme environments: Correlating measures
of personality and coping and resilience
Charles Van Wijk 1
Social media intelligence: The national security–privacy nexus
Dries Putter and Susan Henrico 19
Beyond African Pride: Corruption mechanisms in the Nigerian Navy and maritime
sector
Akali Omeni 45
Towards a project management framework for ICT projects in defence institutions
Sean Filmalter and Rigard Steenkamp 65
Role of moral foundations in the nuclear disarmament of South Africa
Arunjana Das 91
‘Disgusting, disgraceful, inconsequential and dirty renegade?’: Reconstructing the
early life and career of Anglo-Boer War combatant and war prisoner ‘Artie’ Tully,
1889–1910
Hendrik Snyders 121
BOOK REVIEWS
Military strategy: A global history
David Jacobs 143
Blood money: Stories of an ex-Recce’s missions as a private military contractor in
Iraq
Carl Punt 149
Prisoner 913: The release of Nelson Mandela
Willem du Plessis 153
A military history of the Cold War, 1944–1962
Jan-Ad Stemmet 157
Empire of destruction: A history of Nazi mass killing
Anr Delport 161
Apartheid’s black soldiers: Un-national wars and militaries in Southern Africa
Evert Kleynhans 165
South African Journal
of Military Science
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South African Journal of Military Studies
Editorial
From a defence and security point of view, the rst half of 2022 has been largely
overshadowed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine towards the end of February. This
marked a drastic escalation in the Russo–Ukrainian War, which started as far back as
2014. In February, following the Russian recognition of the Donetsk People’s Republic
and the Luhansk People’s Republic – two self-proclaimed statelets in the Donbas
controlled by pro-Russian separatists – the Federation Council of Russia authorised the
use of military force. This prompted Russian troops to enter both territories overtly when
President Vladimir Putin announced a so-called ‘special military operation’ under the
pretext of demilitarising and de-‘Nazifying’ Ukraine. The Russian invasion was initiated
by several missile and airstrikes that hit across Ukraine. These were followed by a
large ground invasion of the territory from multiple axes. The Ukrainians, in response
to this overt act of aggression, and under the stern leadership of President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy, oered staunch resistance on all fronts. At the northern front, in particular,
the Ukrainians were able to stem the Russian advance towards the capital Kyiv, while
Russian forces made several gains in the south and east of Ukraine. Throughout the
invasion, the Ukrainians had shown a strong resolve in halting the Russian invasion, and
by doing so caused considerable losses for the Russian forces. The war has also been
marked by great acts of heroism and dogged persistence – especially by the Ukrainian
defenders in the abandoned factories in Mariupol.
While the Russian invasion has been widely condemned internationally as an act of
aggression, there appears to be no end in sight yet for the war. The Ukrainians in general
have received overt support from the West, bar of course their active involvement in
the war. This support includes political solidarity, as well as considerable economic
and military support – particularly in the form of up-to-date weaponry, training and
even intelligence sharing. The international community have also utilised economic
sanctions and propaganda eorts against Putin and Russia. Unfortunately, none of these
can detract from the large-scale human suering and devastation evident in Ukraine –
which continues to grow each day that the war continues. This is compounded by several
reports of Russian war crimes committed in the Russo–Ukrainian War between 2014
and 2022.
It is evident that military practitioners and academics will keep on monitoring the
Russo–Ukrainian War with great interest as it develops over the coming months. The
war also provides several insights in terms of the changing face of modern warfare
and international relations – particularly in terms of superpower competition, hybrid
or conventional warfare, force structure and employment, defence policy, military
South African Journal
of Military Science
Scientia Militaria, South African Journal of Military Studies, Vol 49, Nr 2, 2021. doi: 10.5787/50-1-1353
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South African Journal of Military Studies
alliances, doctrine, and intelligence and coalition operations, to name but a few. These
issues will be hotly debated over the coming months and years, irrespective of the
outcome of the war.
While the international geopolitical focus has been squarely xed on the events in
Eastern Europe, the Far East and Pacic Rim regions continue to be marked by increasing
tension. Of particular concern is the recent Chinese security pact with the Solomon
Islands, which could lead to a Chinese military presence – and even a naval base – in the
South Pacic. This development is of course particularly worrying for Australia, since
this move by China would directly threaten matters related to defence and security in
the South Pacic region. The brazen testing of a new intercontinental ballistic missile
system, as well as a short-range multiple rocket launcher by the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK) in March 2022 was also noted. These tests once more
occurred in direct violation of the international sanctions imposed against the DRPK and
could derail any hope of sustained and substantive dialogue with the United States, Japan
and the Republic of Korea. If further provocations by the DPRK are left unaddressed,
especially amidst their growing rocket and intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal
and capabilities, the geo-political situation in the region could continue to deteriorate.
The military tension between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan also
continues to simmer. This includes continued breaches of Taiwan’s air defence zone and
the ever-present threat of a full-scale invasion of the island nation. Our attention remains
xed on these regions with the hope that the situations are soon brought under control
through constructive dialogue and mediation.
In Southern Africa, the focus remains on the operational deployment of Southern
African Development Community (SADC) and Rwandan forces to the ungoverned
territory of Cabo Delgado in northern Mozambique to combat the Ahlu-Sunnah Wa-
Jama (al-Shabaab)-linked insurgency. While it is generally reported that forces of the
SADC Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) have scored several successes during the
counterinsurgency operations, and in particular Operation Bualo between October
2021 and January 2022, the troika of the security organ of the SADC approved the
extension of SAMIM for a further three months until mid-July. The apparent reduction
in insurgent attacks has further enabled SAMIM to move from a Scenario 6 to a Scenario
5 mission – which is a shift from a pure interventionist force to that of a force organised
for complex and multidimensional peacekeeping. This change in mandate of course
necessitates the reinforcement of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF)
contingent deployed to Mozambique, which to date has mainly consisted of special
forces. The apparent success of SAMIM once more calls into question issues such as
post-conict reconstruction and development, the re-establishment and maintenance of
law and order, the provision of basic services and, above all, dealing with the key drivers
of the insurgency in the rst place. If these matters are not addressed adequately by the
Mozambican government in the long term, the security situation in Cabo Delgado may
never stabilise – despite increased force levels. The South African deployment as part
of SAMIM also provides an interesting lens through which to investigate issues relating
to doctrine, force structure and design, military operations, defence policy and alliances
among others.
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South African Journal of Military Studies
Back home in South Africa, large-scale ooding in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape
prompted the deployment of SANDF elements in humanitarian relief operations. In this
capacity, they assisted the South African Police Service and emergency medical services
to render aid and assistance where needed. It is also notable that, during the period in
question, the SANDF received its rst batch of Military Skills Development System
(MSDS) recruits for basic military training in March 2022. This is the rst MSDS
intake since 2020, following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately,
the SANDF remains severely over-stretched and critically underfunded while trying to
uphold its constitutional mandate, despite the near constant calls on the organisation to
ensure internal stability and to help with relief work while at the same time ensuring the
defence and security of South Africa.
In this issue of Scientia Militaria, Vol. 50, No. 1, 2022, the articles consider both
historic and contemporary issues associated with war and conict, as well as defence
and security-related matters. As always, it is hoped that these articles will provide key
insights and act as a source of inuence for individuals involved in the broader ambit of
military planning, operations, management and higher education.
The article by Charles Van Wijk argues that the presence of psychological resilience
appears to confer positive personal benets, and may be particularly advantageous for
individuals working in isolated, conned and extreme (ICE) environments – such as the
South African Navy (SAN) and, in particular, navy diving and submarine settings. The
article aims to identify contextually adaptive ‘resilient’ personality and coping proles
in such contexts. Van Wijk did this by correlating scores on measures of resilience
with scores on measures of personality and coping, using specialists identied as good
adaptors. In this article, Van Wijk presents psychometric proles of contemporary
personality and coping styles. By using bivariate correlations, resilience-associated,
context-specic, diver and submariner personality and coping proles were identied.
The ndings by Van Wijk show that the resilient proles appeared well suited to their
respective environments.
In the article by Dries Putter and Susan Henrico, it is argued that global changes
in technology have always shaped the intelligence collection environment. With
communications being revolutionised by mobile technology, such as recording, geo-
positioning and photography, collection and distribution are ubiquitous. Smart mobile
communication technology is also the driver of social media everywhere, at all ages,
whether state or non-state, and non-stop. More recently, Social Media Intelligence
(SOCMINT) became a key content domain for exploitation by the intelligence
community. Initially, many organisations viewed (and some still do) SOCMINT as an
Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) tool. Putter and Henrico state that, when considering
the South African intelligence landscape, the concepts of democracy, transparency and
intelligence oversight are calibrating factors to bear in mind along with the national
legislative framework governing the use of SOCMINT locally. It then becomes clear
that issues, such as the right to privacy, imply that SOCMINT is probably no longer
covered by the scope of the OSINT denition, and that intelligence organisations
collecting social media content and producing SOCMINT should adhere to the
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South African Journal of Military Studies
legislative framework governing the collection and use of social media content and
the production of SOCMINT. The authors argue that SOCMINT and OSINT should be
separate collection domains for better protection of the imperative of the right to privacy
and national security requirements in a balanced manner by means of unambiguous
national regulation in the interest of the citizen.
In his article, Akali Omeni reports on corruption mechanisms within the naval
and maritime sector of Nigeria. The discussion begins with an examination of the
disappearance of the vessel MT African Pride in October 2003, and the author shows
that, far from being a one-o incident, it was indicative of the opportunism and
criminality that naval operations within the oil-rich Niger Delta attracts. The Nigerian
Ports Authority and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency constitute
other case studies of maritime industry corruption examined by the author. He argues
that such cases highlight the exploitation of relations between the Nigerian Navy
and the civil maritime sector. Overall, the article identies and discusses patterns of
corruption mechanisms employed. These include the support of illegal oil bunkering,
illicit agreements and contracts, unsanctioned oil tanker relocations, malfeasance in
arms deals and other areas, and multiple instances of public oce abuse.
The article by Sean Filmalter and Rigard Steenkamp suggests a framework for
information and communication technology (ICT) projects that may address the discord
of traditional project management, which is required for ICT projects within defence
institutions. Filmalter argues that this problem is underlined by the pace of technological
development, and the current problem of compromised project management. He states
that, globally, no specic project management methodology is prominently suitable
for solution delivery within defence institutions. The aim of his study was therefore
to address this evident problem by the development of a framework for the project
management of ICT projects for defence institutions. Filmalter in particular focused on
the ICT function of the South African Department of Defence, which he used as a case
study for the study on which his article reports. Ultimately, his conceptual framework
proposes a hypothetically workable approach for the project management of ICT
projects in defence institutions.
In her study, Arunjana Das applied moral foundations theory to explore the role
played by moral claims in the eventual dismantlement of the South African nuclear
deterrent capability. She argues that South Africa is the only country in the world that
successfully acquired a nuclear deterrent capability in the form of six nuclear devices
– and dismantled them completely. Das shows that some of the explanations given are
strategic reasons, such as the removal of the Soviet threat after the Soviet collapse in
1989, the end of superpower rivalry in Africa, South Africa’s increasing isolation on
account of apartheid, pressure from the United States, and concerns about undeclared
nuclear technology falling in the hands of a new black-led government. The author
states that, while these factors potentially contributed to the eventual dismantlement,
the worldwide campaign led by domestic and transnational movements, which sought to
make moral claims by connecting the cause of anti-apartheid to that of anti-nuclear also
probably played a key role.
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South African Journal of Military Studies
In the nal article, Hendrik Snyders reconstructs the early life and career of Arthur
William (‘Artie’) Tully – a largely forgotten name in South African military history.
Snyders shows that the Australian-born Tully, a professional boxer by trade, joined the
republican forces during the South African War (1899–1902) while working on the
Witwatersrand. After he was captured at the Battle of Vaalkrans, Tully became a prisoner
of war on Diyatalawa in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). After the Peace of Vereeniging,
Tully – portrayed by his brethren as a traitor – rekindled his boxing career and established
himself in Singapore, Southeast Asia, working as a bookmaker, turf commission agent
and mine-owner. While Tully’s visit to Australia – after a thirteen-year absence – was
largely ignored, just like his legacy in post-war studies, Snyders shows that Tully, like
thousands of others, remained an obscure gure of the South African War. While South
Africans ironically continue to celebrate the contribution of a range of other foreign
participants in the war, for unknown reasons, they continue to ignore or remain blissfully
unaware of the contribution of this Australian to South African history. Against this
background, Snyders reconstructed the early life and career of Tully with a view to end
his obscurity in history.
A selection of book reviews by David Jacobs, Carl Punt, Willem du Plessis, Jan-Ad
Stemmet, Anri Delport and Evert Kleynhans concludes this issue of Scientia Militaria.
The Editor
Evert Kleynhans
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South African Journal of Military Studies
1
South African Journal of Military Studies
Psychological proles of resilience in extreme
environments: Correlating measures of personality
and coping and resilience
Charles H van Wijk1
Institute for Maritime Medicine & Stellenbosch University
Abstract
The presence of psychological resilience is believed to confer positive personal benets,
and may be particularly advantageous for individuals working in isolated, conned,
and/or extreme environments. The study reported here aimed to identify contextually
adaptive psychological proles of resilience in such settings. This was done by
correlating scores for measures of resilience with scores for measures of personality and
coping, using South African Navy specialists who were identied as good adaptors. As
resilience proles may dier across contexts, two highly specic samples were used,
namely navy divers and submariners.
This article presents psychometric proles of contemporary personality and coping
styles. Then, using bivariate correlations, resilience-associated, context-specic, diver
and submariner personality and coping proles were identied. Their resilience proles
appeared well suited to their respective environments.
Some dierences were observed between the typical personality descriptions and the
resilience proles identied, with a number of possible reasons forwarded to understand
this. Firstly, there were some concerns regarding the validity of the measures in the local
cultural context; secondly, context-specic resilience may be expressed dierently from
resilience in general society; and thirdly, contemporary proles of specialists may reect
current organisational processes in addition to psychological factors.
In terms of practical application, while the identication of resilience proles may also
have value for selection purposes, it could be particularly useful for mission preparation,
through the training of context-relevant coping skills.
Introduction
The study on which this article is based aimed to identify contextually adaptive
personality and coping proles associated with resilience, to guide deployment in
isolated, conned and extreme (ICE) environments. Resilience refers to the process of
adapting well to challenging psychological demands.2 The concept has been researched
extensively in ICE environments, particularly in military settings, and established scales
are available to measure resilience. Similarly, personality proling, as well as coping
proling, have also been researched extensively in ICE contexts, with established scales
also available to measure these two constructs.
Scientia Militaria, South African Journal of Military Studies, Vol 49, Nr 2, 2021. doi: 10.5787/50-1-1256
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‘ICE environments’ refer to settings characterised by hostile external conditions, exposure
to a range of often unique context-specic physical, mental and social stressors. These
require engineering technology to maintain human survival.3 Examples of ICE settings
include underwater habitats, spacecraft, remote weather stations, and polar outposts.
Within the military, navy diving and submarine service are both considered extreme
environments, because of their unusual demands, the use of technologies to support life,
and the advanced training required to operate safely underwater.
The demands imposed by specic ICE environments are well described, as well as
the idea that a specic kind of psychological prole is required to cope well in such
contexts.4,5,6 There is a long history of personality proling in specialised military
settings, often involving the selection of military personnel for special duty assignments,
such as aviation, submarines, or naval diver training.7 In the context of maritime ICE
environments, personality descriptions have been developed for both navy divers and
submariners.8,9,10 Context-specic coping proles have also been reported for these two
groups.11,12 For example, navy divers display a propensity for adventurousness, a strong
sense of self-agency, and low trait anxiety, and rely on active coping while rejecting
avoidance coping.4,7 Submariners display a strong sense of self-ecacy, meticulousness
and constructive group orientation (i.e. can get along with others), and also rely on
active coping while rejecting avoidance coping.4
To illustrate how context inuences coping, divers typically use acceptance as a coping
strategy. This is often associated with the generally short-term nature of diving operations,
where acceptance only needs to facilitate coping for a short period, and can thus be
maintained successfully. During typically longer submarine operations, crew members
often use positive reframing and religion as coping strategies, rather than acceptance.4
These strategies are associated with more inward-focused coping, and appear suited to
long-duration missions, where acceptance-as-coping might be dicult to sustain.
Historically, studies developing proles have generally sampled experienced personnel,
who have spent some time in their particular domain, and then used the identied
personality traits to describe the typical prole for that domain. As participants were
generally thought of as successful in their respective domains (e.g. successfully managed
exposure to ICE conditions), their typical proles have traditionally been considered as
adaptive-in-context. Using this reasoning, it is often believed that the typical prole is
also the ideal or desired prole, as these individuals have been operating in their ICE
environments for some time (thus making it an ‘adaptive’ prole). Such psychological
proles have then been used to guide selection of new recruits into the eld, in turn
risking perpetuating the prole in any subsequent samples.
It could be argued that a typical prole is not necessarily an ideal or desired prole.
For example, Suedfeld and Steel describe the personality paradox in capsule habitats,
namely that most volunteers applying for anything as challenging and unusual as
space or undersea habitats tend to score toward the upper end of any scale of thrill-
seeking, adventurousness, and similar dimensions.1 Paradoxically, life in capsule
environments (e.g. submarines) is characterised by stimulus invariance (monotonous
3
South African Journal of Military Studies
routine, boring tasks, being cooped up with the same unvarying group) interspersed with
only occasional excitement. Thus, volunteers most likely to end up in specically ICE
capsule environments may potentially not be suited optimally to such environments. The
same may apply to other high-risk ICE activities, for example long-term deployment
to an international space station or polar outposts. Volunteers would have personality
traits supportive of risk-taking and adventurousness, but the actual demands of the
environment may require great technical prociency and corresponding meticulousness,
or particularly good interpersonal skills, or the patience to tolerate connement.
Further, all ICE environments place high demands on long-term psychological adaptation,
which then raises the question of whether any typical prole would necessarily also be
the prole reecting optimal resilience.13 In other words, would proles developed by
traditional means inevitably yield traits that would reect high resilience to the demands
of ICE environments? The relevance of this question is supported by previous studies
with navy specialists, which suggest that the typical personality prole was not always
associated with the prole reecting optimal resilience.14
Psychological resilience is dened as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity,
trauma, tragedy, threats or signicant sources of stress.1 Dispositional resilience, referring
to that personal quality that allows people to overcome hardships and even thrive in the
face of it, have been operationalised in constructs such as sense of coherence, hardiness,
mental toughness and locus of control, reside in the positive psychology domain, and
have previously also been applied to ICE environments.15,16,17,18,19,20,21
Psychological hardiness is a widely researched construct within resilience literature. It
is dened as a personal worldview, which is fairly stable over time, and comprising the
following interrelated components:
• commitment (vs. alienation) – referring to the ability to feel deeply involved
in the activities of life;
• control (vs. powerlessness) – the belief that one can control or inuence
events of one’s experiences; and
• challenge (vs. threat) – the sense of anticipation of change as an opportunity
to foster personal development.17
Hardiness is a psychological orientation associated with people who remain healthy and
continue to perform well under a range of stressful conditions.22,23 Hardy individuals –
that is, persons with a strong sense of commitment, control and challenge – appear to be
more resistant to the adverse eects of personal and environmental stress than less hardy
individuals. As a personality variable, hardiness appears to be largely distinct from the
Big Five personality dimensions.24,25
An extensive body of research supports the notion that hardiness protects against the ill
eects of stress on health and performance among a wide variety of civilian and military
occupations and contexts.26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34 Hardiness has been implicated as a resilience
factor across cultures.35,36 It is thought to decrease the negative eect of stress through
4
South African Journal of Military Studies
a combination of underlying cognitive, physiological and behavioural factors, which
include very specic coping strategies (e.g. active coping rather than avoidant coping
responses).24,37,38
A related construct, termed mental toughness (MT), was partially derived from the
theoretical foundations of hardiness, and extended the theory by adding a fourth
component to the three dimensions of hardiness, namely condence.18 MT is moderately
associated with other psychological constructs associated with mental health, and is
strongly associated with behavioural perseverance.18,39,40,41,42,43 Scores on MT scales
have been related to both coping strategies and performance in military contexts
(e.g. problem-focused rather than avoidance-coping responses).40,44,45 MT correlates
signicantly with the Big Five personality dimensions, with the exception of openness
to experience, although there are concerns whether MT can be regarded as a truly
dispositional trait.41,44,46
Many of the constructs in the resilience literature have their own associated measuring
tools. The Dispositional Resilience Scale (DRS) has been used extensively in military
and non-military samples,25,29,47 with the 15-item self-report version (DRS-15) tapping
into attitudes regarding commitment, control and challenge.48
The Mental Toughness Questionnaire (MTQ) items are aggregated to six dimensions,
with the 18-item self-report version (MTQ-18) providing an overall score for mental
toughness.18,49,50 The application of the DRS-15 and MTQ-18 in the South African (SA)
military context has recently been reported.49
Rationale and aims
If psychological hardiness confers positive personal benets in the face of potentially
adverse physical, social and mental demands, then its presence may be particularly
advantageous for naval specialists working in ICE environments. This returns to the
question of whether a particular psychological prole could be considered resilient in
a particular environment, i.e. whether it would be possible to identify ideal or desired
personality and coping proles associated with resilience in specic contexts.
As mentioned, earlier research with navy specialists suggested that the typical personality
prole may not necessarily be associated with proles reecting optimal resilience.13
Previous studies reported general correlations between both the DRS-15 and MTQ-18
and the Big Five personality factors (see Table 1), suggesting that personality factors
may be associated with resilience. However, it is not clear how this association would
be expressed in terms of the requirements of specic potentially demanding contexts. In
other words, would the nature or degree of association between personality factors and
resilience be inuenced by specic ICE settings? The previously reported correlations
appear to suggest that a personality prole reecting optimal resilience – contingent on
environmental context – could be described.
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South African Journal of Military Studies
Table 1: Published correlations between the DRS-15 and MTQ-18, and the Big Five
personality traits
Scale E A C N O Source
DRS-15 Total scale .11* n.s. .18* -.25* n.s. Bartone et al. (2009)23
DRS-15 Total score .41* .24* .28* -.38* .40* Kardum et al. (2012)57
DRS-15 Total score .61* .41* .50* n.s. .39* Loche (2017)60
MTQ-18 Total score .37* .32* .41* -.74* .14 Delaney et al. (2015)45
MTQ-18 Total score .49* -.61* Curran (2017)59
* p<.01
Note: E=extraversion; A=agreeableness; C=conscientiousness; N=neuroticism;
O=openness to experience; n.s.=not signicant
The study on which this article is based therefore aimed to identify contextually adaptive
psychological proles associated with resilience for deployment in ICE environments.
Psychological proles here refer to the dual domains of personality and coping. The
study explored associations between resilience and other psychometric descriptions of
specialist groups by correlating scores for measures of hardiness and MT with scores for
measures of personality and coping. As resilience proles may dier across contexts, the
study used two highly specic samples, namely navy divers and submariners, for whom
good resilience has traditionally been reported.13
Methods
Participants
The sample consisted of South African Navy (SAN) divers and submariners on active
duty, who were recruited during their annual occupational health assessment. The study
was conducted according the principles set out in the Declaration of Helsinki (2013).
Written informed consent was obtained; the study was also part of a larger project with
Institutional Review Board approval. In accordance with study parameters, all data were
anonymised prior to analysis. The data were collected over a period of three years, and
sample sizes are indicated for each analysis.
All participants included in the nal sample were considered good adaptors, based on a
number of criteria:
• all participants had to have completed at least two years of operational
experience after qualication – indicating adaptation in their respective
extreme environment;
• participants were required to have no organisational record of poor
psychological adaptation in their respective specialist environments;
• participants had to submit positive supervisors’ reports, including a
recommendation for continued use in their eld; and
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• participants had to provide positive self-reports of good coping (obtained
during their annual medical examinations).
The 125 divers (6.4% female) had a mean age of 27.7 years (± 5.7, range 20–48), while
the 213 submariners (25.4% female) had a mean age of 31.6 years (± 6.7, range 23–51).
The divers all had 12 years of formal schooling, while the submariners had a further one
to eight years of additional vocational training.
Measures
Hardiness was measured with the DRS-15, which was used in its standard format.46 The
DRS-15 is scored on a four-point Likert-type scale, with higher scores reecting greater
hardiness. Good psychometric properties and criterion-related validity across multiple
samples have been reported, including a Cronbach’s α reliability coecient of .82 for
the total scale, and .71 for a general SA Navy sample.26,46,49
Mental toughness was measured with the MTQ-18.18 It is scored on a ve-point Likert-
type scale, with higher scores reecting greater MT. High test–retest reliability, high
internal consistency, and good validity have been reported, including a Cronbach’s α
reliability coecient of .70 for the total scale, and .88 for a general SA Navy sample.18,38,49
Personality was described with the State-Trait Personality Inventory, Trait version
(STPI-T) and Big Five Inventory (BFI-44), while coping styles were described with
the Brief COPE (BC) scale. The STPI-T measures personality traits according to the
emotional disposition model, and consists of 40 self-report items – scored on a four-
point scale – that measure dispositional anxiety, curiosity, anger and depression in
adults.51 Hardiness has previously been (negatively) correlated to dispositional anxiety
and anger.24
The BFI-44 measures personality traits according to the ve-factor model. 52,53 The scale
was constructed to allow quick and ecient assessment of ve personality dimensions
when there is no need for dierentiated measures of particular facets. It consists of 44
self-report items with short phrases and relatively accessible vocabulary, rated on a ve-
point scale.51,52 Hardiness has previously been positively correlated to extraversion and
negatively correlated to neuroticism.24
The BC is a 28-item self-report inventory designed to assess coping responses across
14 coping domains.54 Ratings for each item are made on a four-point scale, and higher
scores represent greater endorsement of coping strategies. Hardiness has previously been
positively correlated to active coping and negatively correlated to avoidance coping.24
Data analysis
The personality and coping proles of the sample were reported using descriptive
statistics. Internal consistency of the resilience scales was examined using Cronbach’s
α coecients. There were no signicant gender dierences on either the DRS-15 or
MTQ-18, and the rest of the analysis combined the scores of women and men in each
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speciality. The association between resilience and specic personality and/or coping
proles were thereafter explored using correlational statistics. Due to a technical error,
correlations between the MTQ-18 and BC were not available.
Results
The combined sample DRS-15 produced a marginally acceptable Cronbach α of .66,
while the MTQ-18 produced a more acceptable Cronbach α of .87. The psychometric
proles of the SAN specialists are presented in Table 2. Both groups – divers and
submariners – scored high on the DRS-15 and MTQ-18 compared to norms, suggesting
good psychological resilience.38,39,47
Table 2: Personality and coping proles of navy divers and submariners
Divers Submariners
NM SD NM SD
STPI-T
Anxiety 125 14.01 3.0 212 13.20 2.9
Curiosity 125 29.93 4.1 212 31.54 4.7
Anger 125 16.14 3.6 212 15.05 3.6
Depression 125 13.56 3.0 212 13.35 2.9
BFI-44
Extraversion 125 3.63 0.5 212 3.78 0.6
Agreeableness 125 4.32 0.5 212 4.45 0.5
Conscientiousness 125 4.33 0.5 212 4.43 0.5
Neuroticism 125 1.86 0.6 212 1.67 0.5
Open to experience 125 3.67 0.4 212 3.76 0.4
Brief COPE
Self-distraction 125 3.14 1.7 194 3.19 1.7
Active coping 125 4.89 1.3 194 5.01 1.2
Denial 125 1.04 1.4 194 0.88 1.3
Substance use 125 0.13 0.5 194 0.10 0.5
Use emotional support 125 3.46 1.6 194 3.93 1.6
Use instrumental support 125 4.25 1.6 194 4.60 1.4
Behavioural disengagement 125 0.38 0.9 194 0.33 0.8
Venting 125 1.96 1.5 194 1.97 1.3
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Positive reframing 125 4.42 1.4 194 4.48 1.4
Planning 125 4.65 1.4 194 4.97 1.2
Humour 125 2.85 1.9 194 2.45 1.9
Acceptance 125 4.26 1.4 194 4.46 1.4
Religion 125 3.91 1.9 194 4.27 2.0
Self-blame 125 0.64 0.9 194 0.56 0.7
DRS-15
Total score 125 35.26 4.6 213 36.72 4.3
Cronbach’s α 125 .65 213 .66
MTQ-18
Total score 123 70.41 9.3 189 71.98 8.2
Cronbach’s α 123 .87 189 .86
Note. Means in bold identify the contemporary typical prole, of this sample, for each
specialty.
The SAN specialists displayed very similar contemporary personality proles, scoring
in the direction of healthy emotional disposition across the four STPI-T subscales, and
with Big Five personality proles characterised by average scores for extraversion and
openness to experience, higher scores for agreeableness and conscientiousness, and
lower scores for neuroticism.
The coping proles of divers was characterised by the use of seven specic coping
strategies, and those of the submariners by the use of nine specic coping strategies.
Unsurprisingly, in both groups there was a reliance on engagement – in other words,
active coping – as an endorsed strategy, and a clear non-endorsement of avoidant coping
strategies.
Bivariate correlations between the DRS-15 and measures of personality and coping are
presented in Table 3. The hardy prole was associated with the typical STPI-T prole
reported in Table 2. Further, all ve BFI-44 factors were associated with hardiness, which
diered somewhat from the typical prole reported in Table 2. Seven of the nine markers
of the typical submariner coping prole (see Table 2), as well as an additional two
markers (namely use of emotional support and religion), were associated with hardiness
among submariners, suggesting that these coping styles work to the benet of these
individuals. In contrast, only a limited number of markers from the typical diver coping
prole (see Table 2) were associated with hardiness among the navy diver sample, with
acceptance showing the strongest correlation. Across both samples, correlations with
coping domains were, while signicant, generally very modest.
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Table 3: Bivariate correlations between DRS-15 total score and measures of personality
and coping
Divers Submariners
Nr p Nr p
STPI-T
Anxiety 125 -.437 <.001 212 -.455 <.001
Curiosity 125 .404 <.001 212 .333 <.001
Anger 125 -.212 .017 212 -.333 <.001
Depression 125 -.498 <.001 212 -.388 <.001
BFI-44
Extraversion 125 .295 .001 212 .402 <.001
Agreeableness 125 .408 <.001 212 .440 <.001
Conscientiousness 125 .581 <.001 212 .515 <.001
Neuroticism 125 -.551 <.001 212 -.521 <.001
Open to experience 125 .453 <.001 212 .414 <.001
BC
Self-distraction 125 -.099 .270 194 .093 .196
Active coping 125 .202 .024 194 .303 <.001
Denial 125 -.117 .194 194 -.147 .051
Substance use 125 -.054 .553 194 -.181 .012
Use emotional support 125 .068 .448 194 .243 .001
Use instrumental support 125 .138 .125 194 .340 <.001
Behavioural disengagement 125 -.230 .010 194 -.184 .010
Venting 125 -.124 .170 194 .161 .052
Positive reframing 125 .144 .110 194 .222 .002
Planning 125 .080 .373 194 .305 <.001
Humour 125 .008 .929 194 .100 .164
Acceptance 125 .305 .001 194 .398 <.001
Religion 125 .141 .116 194 .162 .024
Self-blame 125 -.193 .031 194 -.130 .072
Bivariate correlations between the MTQ-18 and measures of personality are presented
in Table 4. Like the DRS-15 prole, the MTQ-18 was associated with the typical STPI-T
prole reported in Table 2, and with all ve BFI-44 factors, which again diered from
the typical prole reported in Table 2.
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Table 4: Bivariate correlations between MTQ-18 total score and measures of personality
Divers Submariners
Nr p N r p
STPI-T
Anxiety 123 -.684 <.001 188 -.678 <.001
Curiosity 123 .613 <.001 188 .577 <.001
Anger 123 -.379 <.001 188 -.563 <.001
Depression 123 -.687 <.001 188 -.653 <.001
BFI-44
Extraversion 123 .145 .110 176 .337 <.001
Agreeableness 123 .175 .052 176 .367 <.001
Conscientiousness 123 .297 .001 176 .490 <.001
Neuroticism 123 -.369 <.001 176 -.503 <.001
Open to experience 123 .247 .006 176 .180 .016
The SAN submarine personality prole that best reected resilience was characterised
by low scores for dispositional anxiety, anger and depression, and high scores for
dispositional curiosity, as well as high scores for the extraversion, agreeableness,
conscientiousness, and openness to experience factors, and low scores for the neuroticism
factor. Their coping prole best reecting resilience was characterised by the use of
active coping, emotional and instrumental support, positive reframing, planning,
acceptance and religion, and the non-endorsement of substance use and behavioural
disengagement.
The SAN diver personality prole that best reected resilience was also characterised
by low scores for dispositional anxiety, anger, and depression, and high scores for
dispositional curiosity. However, their Big Five resilience prole was not unanimous.
DRS-15 correlations suggested that high scores for the extraversion, agreeableness,
conscientiousness, and openness to experience factors, and low scores for the
neuroticism factor were associated with resilience. MTQ-18 correlations suggested that
only high scores for the conscientiousness and openness to experience factors, and low
scores for the neuroticism factor were associated with resilience. Their coping prole
best reecting resilience was characterised by the use of active coping and acceptance,
and the non-endorsement of behavioural disengagement and self-blame.
Discussion
This study aimed to identify contextually adaptive psychological proles associated
with optimal resilience for deployment in ICE environments. In this regard, personality
and coping proles associated with resilience were identied for both submariners and
navy divers.
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The resilience-associated prole in this sample of maritime specialists was characterised
by low dispositional anxiety, anger, and depression, and high dispositional curiosity, as
well as high degrees of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to
experience, and a low degree of neuroticism. This description follows previous reports
of comparable correlations of resilience measures of dispositional anxiety and anger,
and extraversion and neuroticism.24 A similar emotional disposition has previously been
shown to support wellbeing and was considered protective of mental health.55,56 Given
the isolated, conned and/or extreme environment into which these maritime specialists
may deploy, healthy emotional disposition and low neuroticism would be positive
resources for emotional self-management (i.e. protect mental health). Furthermore,
the strong association with conscientiousness could be expected in a safety critical
environment with reliance on life-support technology. This trait is closely related to the
reported meticulousness of submariners, who work in an environment where mistakes
cost lives.4,8,13 The association with agreeableness would facilitate good interpersonal
management in conned spaces, where the constructive management of relations is
critical for psychological adaptation.2,3,5,57
The SAN specialists showed much stronger correlations between resilience scores
and the Big Five factors compared to those reported for both West Point students and
general population samples (see Table 1),23,58 which may suggest an inherent personality
requirement in the ICE context. This supports previous ndings implying that very
specic personality proles appear particularly adaptive in these relatively unique
environments.9,11,13,56,58
Although the personality proles associated with resilience for divers and submariners
were generally similar, it was noteworthy that they reported dierent coping styles
associated with resilience, which could possibly be attributed to their dierent deployment
and work environment demands.4 For example, the presence of active coping and the
absence of behavioural disengagement (i.e. withdrawal) were prominently correlated
to resilience across both specialities. This association has previously been reported in
related groups,24,37 and has also been observed among international diver and submariner
samples.11,59
Furthermore, resilient submariners additionally endorsed positive reframing, acceptance
and religion as coping strategies, reecting internal or ‘cognitive’ approaches to coping.
These strategies may be particularly useful to facilitate resilience in the context of
submarine operations where practical measures of coping with chronic stressors may not
always be available (i.e. when on extended patrol). The requirement of sustaining coping
across longer missions in demanding contexts may thus activate the use of internal
mechanisms to cope.4 Submarine patrols of longer duration are often associated with an
increasing sense of social isolation, making internal strategies particularly appropriate.4
The association of hardiness and use of emotional support among submariners can also
be understood in terms of their deployed environment. The physical context of close
personal interaction in a submarine, together with an acknowledged reliance on each
other to meet the demands of a hostile external environment, facilitates opportunities to
draw on the emotional support of the group.4
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Resilient divers additionally endorsed acceptance, and disregarded self-blame, as coping
strategies. As mentioned earlier, divers’ use of acceptance may be particularly suitable
to the typically short-term nature of stressful diving operations, while their previously
reported high condence and self-esteem could explain their non-use of self-blame as a
coping strategy.4
Some dierences were observed between the known group or typical prole of the
divers and submariners – as described by the BFI-44 and the BC – and the identied
resilience prole. This apparent contrast between the actual and resilience personality
and coping proles could be hypothesised to be inuenced by a number of factors.
Firstly, although the SAN currently applies no occupational-specic psychological
selection, at least some of the older participants may originally have been selected into
their respective occupational groups based on typical proles (a practice that the SAN
employed in the past). The actual proles may thus reect previous selection biases.
Secondly, in spite of their earlier use in South Africa, neither the DRS-15 nor the
MTQ-18 might be an accurate measure of resilience in the SA cultural context (the
same argument could also apply to the BFI-44). Although it has been translated into a
number of languages and is used successfully across the global north, the underlying
components of the DRS and/or MTQ may not translate easily into the cultural context
of a developing country, such as South Africa.28,34,57,60,61,62 Support for this concern was
found in three indicators in the ndings:
• the DRS-15, as a scale, displayed poor internal consistency, and may not be a
useful measure of resilience locally;
• the unusually high scores of the DRS-15 and MTQ-18 found here (see Table
2) are not unexpected for a specialist group, but a recent study reported that a
general SAN sample also scored much higher than comparable international
norm groups,49 and this unexpected nding raises doubts about the validity
of these scales; and
• the two instruments are also brief scales, which provide a limited assessment
of resilience, whereas extended measures may provide more accurate
reections of actual resilience.
Thirdly, the ICE context of these specialists may pose unique demands that require
specic traits or behaviours that are not necessarily associated with resilience in general
society or even in the general military. Earlier studies described very specic personality
proles for divers and submariners and others in ICE environments. Very specic
coping styles and strategies have also been described in specic ICE contexts.8,10,11,56,58,63
These strategies are, for example, an over-reliance on active problem-solving skills and
a rejection of behavioural disengagement (i.e. avoiding, withdrawing or giving up).
Such strategies may be very important when living and working in settings requiring
life-support technology to maintain survival, but may not always be equally important
in other circumstances. Resilience proles in ICE contexts may thus look dierent
from resilience proles in other, everyday contexts. Support for the concept of context-
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specic resilience could also be inferred from the observation that associations (and
the strength of correlations) between personality factors and resilience diered between
the maritime specialities reported here and other samples outside ICE environments.
23,57
Resilience traits, it appears, are contingent on context.
Lastly, various organisational processes involved in the recruitment and/or retention of
naval personnel in the SA context may create opportunity for individuals with dierent-
from-expected general resilience proles to enter and remain in military specialities.
For example, recent research suggests that socio-economic factors, additional to
psychological factors such as interest or aptitude, might be signicant contributors to
employment choices of navy divers.
64
Typical, contemporary, psychological proles – in the context of ICE environments –
are often considered ideal proles, and are thus used to guide recruitment and selection
of personnel. However, the ndings reported here suggest that such proles may not
necessarily be the most optimal resilience proles in each respective context. This brings
a challenge to the extent to which traditional or known group proles should be used
to guide recruitment or selection of personnel for missions in ICE environments. For
example, one implication of this study is that following the typical prole, attention
would traditionally be placed on three of the Big Five factors, while their association
with hardiness suggests that attention should be paid to an individual’s score across
all ve factors. The DRS-15 and BFI-44 are brief scales, and generally not considered
comprehensive enough for selection purposes. However, the principle remains, namely
that reliance on known group or typical proles – in this case of navy specialists –
may neglect other equally important factors, such as dispositional resilience or specic
coping repertoires.
A limitation of the study was the lack of a control group consisting of designated ‘poor
adaptors’ to allow comparison between the traits of those who successfully adapt to their
contexts, and those who do not. Furthermore, successful adaptation was inferred, and
although a number of criteria were used to make this inference, more specic indicators
may be required to describe successful adaptation more accurately.
Future studies could explore the extent to which resilience proles, whichever way
they are determined, should be considered desirable proles and used to guide entry
into any ICE mission. This could be done by, among others, extending the analysis by
correlating personality and resilience scores with actual behavioural outcomes during
and after ICE missions. Such behavioural outcomes could include markers of general
or mental health, and/or indicators of coping (whether according to a subjective self-
report or possibly a more objective peer report), and/or measures of performance (work
or social functioning), and/or other indicators of personal experience. Such a wide
range of markers may facilitate a more nuanced understanding of the interplay between
personality and coping proles, and personal resilience and psychological adaptation in
ICE contexts, than previous limited-focus analyses.
With research on-going, two practical applications, with demonstrated success to
enhance resilience, could continue to be implemented.
65,66
Firstly, in the current context
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where limited resources impact on operational deployments, it remains imperative to
foster sense of purpose and belonging. Having a sense of purpose is associated with
greater endorsement of preventive health behaviours and improved morbidity and
mortality. Likewise, a sense of belonging (to military unit or other social groups)
protects military service members from developing adverse psychological reactions
following deployments. Secondly, it is worth to consider extending the practice to embed
resilience resources within high-stress work places to include ICE environments. There
is widespread evidence that embedding mental health providers and behavioural health
technicians – who have operational and cultural competence specic to the military
context – enhances psychological health among service members and leaders. Of
particular interest is that many embedded military resilience/mental tness programs are
eectively implemented by trained “lay” personnel rather than highly educated mental
health professionals, making program implementation more exible and less costly.
Conclusion
The study on which article reported set out to explore contextually adaptive
psychological proles of resilience in unusual settings. It did so by correlating scores for
measures of resilience with scores for measures of personality and coping, and identied
psychological proles reecting resilience, for both SAN diving and submarine settings
as examples of ICE environments.
The researcher concluded that the expected, typical proles were not wholly associated
with resilience proles. This has a number of implications. Firstly, resilience may
need to be understood contextually, where optimal resilience proles may dier across
settings with divergent psychological demands. Secondly, traditional proling of groups
operating in ICE environments – for purposes of developing reference proles for use
in recruitment or selection – may not necessarily be successful in identifying the most
resilient individuals for such applications.
These ndings might have value for mission selection purposes, in guiding the
assessment of candidates to enhance mission success, as well as individual wellbeing.
More importantly, the context-dependent nature of resilience might be a particularly
useful consideration for mission preparation, by guiding the training of context-relevant
coping skills.
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1 Charles van Wijk is employed as a clinical psychologist at the Institute for Maritime Medicine
and a Research Fellow with the Department of Industrial Psychology at the Faculty
of Military Science of Stellenbosch University. He is a keen diver, and his past
research centred around both the neuropsychology of, and psychological adaptation in,
hyperbaric environments, as well as supporting mental wellbeing in associated high-
demand occupational settings. Current research interests are related to occupational
mental health surveillance.
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South African Journal of Military Studies
Social media intelligence:
The national security–privacy nexus
Dr Dries Putter
Department of Strategic Studies, Stellenbosch University &
Aliate Member, National Security Hub, University of Canberra
Dr Susan Henrico
Department of Strategic Studies & Research Fellow SIGLA,
Stellenbosch University
Abstract
Globally, changes in technology have always shaped the intelligence collection
environment. South Africa is no exception. The emergence of satellite imagery had a
signicant inuence on geographic intelligence (GEOINT) capabilities and, similarly, the
emergence of the telegram and later the telephone had an equally signicant eect on the
signals intelligence (SIGINT) environment. With communications being revolutionised
by mobile technology, such as recording, geo-positioning and photography, collection
and distribution are ubiquitous. Smart mobile communication technology is also the
driver of social media everywhere – at all ages, for state and non-state purposes, non-
stop. More recently, social media intelligence (SOCMINT) became a key content domain
for exploitation by the intelligence community. Examples of the successful exploitation
of SOCMINT can be found internationally. It would be surprising if South Africa is not
yet a statistic in terms of this phenomenon. Initially, many organisations viewed (and
some still do) SOCMINT as an open-source intelligence (OSINT) tool. However, when
considering the South African (SA) intelligence landscape, the concepts ‘democracy’,
‘transparency’ and ‘intelligence oversight’ are calibrating factors to bear in mind. It is
also important to consider the inuence of the national legislative framework governing
the use of SOCMINT in South Africa. It then becomes clear that issues – such as the
right to privacy – mean that SOCMINT is probably no longer covered by the scope of
the OSINT denition and that intelligence organisations collecting social media content
and producing SOCMINT should adhere to the legislative framework governing the
collection and use of social media content and the production of SOCMINT. This article
argues that SOCMINT and OSINT should be separate collection domains to protect
the imperative of the right to privacy and national security requirements in a balanced
manner by means of unambiguous national regulation in the interest of all citizens.
Keywords: social media, social media intelligence (SOCMINT), open-source intelligence
(OSINT), national security, intelligence, privacy, POPIA, RICA, South Africa
Scientia Militaria, South African Journal of Military Studies, Vol 49, Nr 2, 2021. doi: 10.5787/50-1-1345
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Introduction
Social media can no longer be regarded as a niche technology or social interaction
enabler. It is mature to the point of being weaponised – with the current usage thereof
in the Russia–Ukraine war a case in point67 – the naïve intent of the developers of some
or all the current social media applications aside. Social media in the contemporary age
is a signicant enabler of social cohesion, cultural diversication, trade, security and
access to and interaction with almost everything. Signicant portions of the daily lives
of people, young and old, are dedicated to interaction with one or a variety of social
media applications. This might not seem to be very problematic from a developmental
perspective. However, when the other side of the nexus is introduced – security and its
older brother, national security – then the conversation becomes complex. Social media
applications and the content thereof are currently utilised to its capacity by international
alliances, individual countries and individuals in support of their preferred protagonist
in the Russia–Ukraine war:
Social media has become a primary source of information for news-
hungry audiences around the world trying to make sense of the
Russian invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, it’s being used by the
governments of Russia and Ukraine to set the agenda for wider media
reporting. Ocial Russian government accounts have been found to
be amplifying pro-Russia disinformation on Twitter. Meanwhile, the
Ukrainian government has taken to the platform to appeal to its two
million followers for support.68
Dening social media also still seems to be problematic. Social media is inclusive
of another construct – social networking.69 Social networking can be dened as “a
community that forms around a common interest”,70 whereas social media is inclusive
of “social networks, blogs, wikis, podcasts, fora, content communities and micro-
blogging”.71 Considering these descriptions, the problem around the need for privacy
(or exclusion of those not part of the ‘common interest’) and the need for transparency
about such ‘common interest’ from a security perspective, are easily imagined. The
above-mentioned problem or social dilemma can only be regulated with contractual
agreements and legislation.
Today, and progressively towards the horizon of time, social media both enables
social interaction and facilitates insecurity on an international scale. Social media is
instrumental in building social cohesion around common interests, but it also facilitates
the destruction of social cohesion when manipulated by state and non-state actors with
dubious intent. This fact can best be illustrated by referring to the current Russia–Ukraine
war, which has polarised the international community yet again into West vs East or
democratic vs authoritarian or communist. Social media will never be regarded as just
another platform for conversation, but rather as the ‘go-to’ platform to shape narratives
within every state power domain to secure national interest. It is thus a primary national
intelligence enabler.
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The article introduces, for the benet of the uninitiated to this phenomenon, social
media intelligence (SOCMINT)72 and presents arguments about the possible impact
social media data, information and knowledge (henceforth referred to as ‘content’)
have on the intelligence community, privacy concerns and national security. Assisting
the reader to dierentiate between SOCMINT and open-source intelligence (OSINT)
– a key objective of this article – the discussion is expanded into relevant semantics
within the SOCMINT–OSINT debate. This also serves to highlight the requirement
for robust legislation to regulate the use of SOCMINT as a process and product. The
article introduces a fundamental dierentiating element between SOCMINT and OSINT
– citizens’ right to privacy in a nexus with national security imperatives of states. The
second objective of the article is to consider leading international SOCMINT regulations
as a benchmark of how this national security–privacy nexus within the SOCMINT–
OSINT debate informs an introductory discussion about the SA legislative framework,
which is central to the regulation of the use of SOCMINT within the SA context. The
article does not constitute a legal opinion, but rather an opinion about what South Africa
must consider for an enhanced balance of the national security right to privacy nexus
within the context of the SOCMINT–OSINT debate.
The birth of SOCMINT
Accepting the existence and maturity of the internet73 and the World Wide Web
application, a signicant by-product of this globally distributed communication and
content storage capacity is social media. Britannica (2021) provides a very apt description
of the internet, namely “a system architecture that has revolutionized communications
and methods of commerce by allowing various computer networks around the world to
interconnect”74. An important fact not to miss is that Britannica (2021) estimated that,
by 2020, more than 4,5 billion people had access to the internet – and consequently
to all associated applications. This gure will grow exponentially. It is the urge of
individuals to communicate that drives the proliferation of social media applications
and their use. The internet and now ubiquitously used World Wide Web applications
are most probably the most powerful communication tool known to humankind. This
holds incalculable potential for intelligence operations but similarly, and in parallel,
an almost uncontrollable communication medium for (national) security threats. A
recent example is the tremendous inuence that social media had and still is having on
health intelligence. While governments are trying to inuence their citizens positively to
vaccinate, so-called ‘anti-vaxxers’ are spreading a dierent picture via social media. It is
clear that social media can have both a positive75 and a negative eect on the spread of
information about health issues.
The acronym ‘SOCMINT’ was coined by Omand, Bartlett and Miller in 201276 who
argue:77
In an age of ubiquitous social media it is the responsibility of the security
community to admit SOCMINT into the national intelligence framework,
but only when two important tests are passed. First, that it rests on solid
methodological bedrock of collection, evidence, verication, understanding
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and application. Second, that the moral hazard it entails can be legitimately
managed.
Ten years on, SOCMINT is signicantly inuencing political, socio-economic and
national security dynamics to the point of facilitating instability. Such instability was
experienced during the Arab Spring campaigns (2010-201178), not necessarily due to
access to social media, but rather facilitated and developed using social media.79 Senekal
(2018) provides a short summary of such inuence –
Twitter, for example, is used by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (also
known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham, currently known as
Daesh) (ISIS) and by Al-Qaeda's aliate, Al-Shabaab. By 1999, almost
every known terrorist group had a presence on the internet and during the
2011 Egyptian Revolution 32 000 new groups and 14 000 new pages were
created on Facebook from within Egypt. Signicant mass demonstrations
where Twitter played an important role include the civil unrest in Moldova
in 2009, the Iranian election protests of 2009–2010, the Tunisian Revolution
of 2010–2011, the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 and the Occupy Wall Street
(OWS) protest, which took place in the autumn of 2011 in cities around the
world. Locally, a lot of conversations around recent movements such as
#RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall also took place on social media and
especially on Twitter.80
Brown, Guskin and Mitchell (2012) state, “[s]ocial media indeed played a part in the
Arab uprisings. Networks formed online were crucial in organising a core group of
activists, specically in Egypt. Civil society leaders in Arab countries emphasised the
role of “the internet, mobile phones, and social media”81 in the protests. Additionally,
digital media have been used by Arabs to exercise freedom of speech and as a space
for civic engagement.”82 These examples could be expanded into a signicant volume
of pages when the current war in Ukraine is brought into view from the perspective
of SOCMINT and the use of OSINT. Several other researchers have investigated this
phenomenon. The instability and change facilitated by social media are not the focus
points of this article, but rather the implications of SOCMINT, operationally and legally.
Several years after the article by Brown et al., (2012)83 and Smidi and Shahin (2017)
concluded:
[T]he bulk of the research contends that social media enabled or facilitated
the protests by providing voice to people in societies with mostly
government-controlled legacy media; helping people connect, mobilise and
organise demonstrations; and broadcasting protests to the world at large
and gaining global support. Some scholars, however, argue that social
media played only a limited or secondary role, which ought to be viewed
alongside other social, political, economic and historical factors.84
Social media therefore has an incontestable inuence on national security issues. This
could be viewed solely from a negative perspective, but a more prudent approach would
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be to consider both opportunities and threats associated with social media within the
context of national security and intelligence. Consideration of these factors should
inform conversations about mitigation of threats and exploitation of opportunities within
a national legal framework. In South Africa, such legal framework is still in the infant
stage of development. This results in possible uncertainty about the impact on the use
of SOCMINT by SA intelligence agencies. First, let us delve into potential SOCMINT
semantics and opportunities on oer by this ubiquitous technology and software.
Critical semantics
A question could be raised whether SOCMINT is open-source intelligence (OSINT).
Hassan argues, “OSINT sources are distinguished from other forms of intelligence
because they must be legally accessible by the public without breaching any copyright,
patents or privacy laws.”85 Social media stores and provides access to considerable
amounts of content; yet vast volumes of such are privileged, i.e., protected by personal
passwords and administrative rights as well as copyright protection agreed to in
application terms of reference.
Frequently, ‘unrestricted’ data on these public social media sites is restricted
by individual privacy settings; for instance, Facebook notications by an
individual are accessible to only those within the individual’s peer group if
the privacy setting is established in such a manner. However, SOCMINT, by
denition, accesses all such data without considering privacy. This places
a greater emphasis on SOCMINT’s instructions for dealing with individual
privacy than that of conventional OSINT searches. Even though OSINT
does intrude on individual privacy when it stores search information made
by individuals, such as the information that is sought when searching
for a location on an Internet map. However, SOCMINT’s intrusion is far
more incisive than [that of] OSINT, because it monitors people in the
most obtrusive manner and in their most unaware state – when they are
interacting and relaxing in their online social comfort zone.86
SOCMINT is therefore not a new phenomenon. However, SOCMINT is still regularly
assumed part of OSINT. Considering the perspectives already aired, SOCMINT can
probably not be regarded as OSINT, and hence the conversation about the legal basis for
SA intelligence services and agencies to gain legitimate access to the content of social
media in support of national security imperatives.
In an article in the Daily Maverick, it is stated how the SA government is using content
from social media accounts, claiming that it is used against security threats. The data
are bought from surveillance companies, who in turn bought it from social media
companies.87 If a signicant part of such data were privileged (i.e., access authority
required), the question could be raised whether SOCMINT can be viewed as OSINT
(no access authority required) or rather as a new collection discipline with its own set
of rules that consider the ethical and legal requirements of privacy. From a denitional
perspective – OSINT is outlined and characterised as “information that is publicly
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available to anyone”.88 Constantin-Sorin (2019) argues that this includes “traditional
media (newspapers, radio, television, etc.), public data (government reports, ocial data,
etc.), web communities and personal reports”.89 Key to this denition is the construct of
publicly available, which is dierent from having account access.
One perspective denes SOCMINT as “information gathered from social media sites and
the tools employed to analyse this data [and] focuses on understanding and forecasting
behaviours, crises, and events”.90 This denition provides little insight into the level of
intrusiveness and does not dierentiate SOCMINT from, for example, OSINT. A more
widely articulated perspective is that SOCMINT can be dened and characterised as –
[T]he process of identifying, collecting, validating and analysing data from
social media sites and accounts using nonintrusive and/or intrusive methods
to develop intelligence that reduces the unknowns in the decision process91
[and/or] with the aim of developing products for national security.92
Key to this denition is ‘accounts’, which implies access authority required or privacy
or privileged content. The dierentiation is therefore focused on the process rather than
on the products generated.
The confusion about whether SOCMINT can be regarded as an OSINT discipline
possibly originates from the fact that some might regard content that is openly shared on
social media platforms as ‘publicly available to anyone’. When considering the OSINT
denition by Lowenthal and Clark,93 some of the elements of SOCMINT are contained
in the OSINT denition. However, when considering the explanations provided by
Davis (2015) 94, Ivan, Iov, Anamaria, Codruta and Nicolae (2015)95 and Constantin-Sorin
(2019)96 it is no longer clear whether SOCMINT can be grouped within the OSINT
discipline. In short –
SOCMINT [in other words the process of collection and exploitation] can
be deployed on content that is private or public, while OSINT is about
strictly publicly available content, such as articles, news sites, or blog
posts, published in print and on the open internet and clearly intended and
available for everyone to read and watch. SOCMINT requires more specic
regulation, policies and safeguards that take into account the very unique
and specic nature of social media: a privately-owned space (i.e., owned by
private companies) where people share freely.97
Consideration should be given to both international and legal aspects governing the use
of social media as an intelligence source before drawing any such conclusions. This
distinction and classication should inform future policy decisions about the mandates
of intelligence services and agencies, as well as subsequent organisational restructuring
(if required) and resource allocations. No matter how academics and experts eventually
agree on a universal denition of SOCMINT, the phenomenon provides several
opportunities. There are, however, also some moral and ethical issues.
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SOCMINT and privacy
Without wandering into the never-ending maze that is constructed from morality and
privacy, arguments are forwarded by Rønn and Søe (2019) with regard to the duality of
social media.98 These authors contend that social media has both a public and private
character and where these two domains overlap, it creates a ‘grey zone’. It is exactly
this grey zone constructed of private content within a public space that separates OSINT
from SOCMINT. Entry into this grey zone will require the verication of credentials,
which separate it from the domain of OSINT. Rønn and Søe (2019) argue further:
Although the information can easily be accessed, the pressing question
is whether and under which circumstances it is morally permissible for
government authorities to gain access to personal social media accounts
and exploit the information for safety and security issues.99
Rønn and Søe (2019) refer to the opinions of Herman Tavani100 about the types of
privacies (“informational privacy is just one of four distinct kinds of privacy, the others
being physical/accessibility privacy, decisional privacy and psychological/mental
privacy”101) pointing out that information privacy is not a monolith within questions of
morality.
Informational privacy is often described as the ability to control or restrict
access to one’s personal information. Hence, in informational privacy it is
personal information (or personal data) which people have a right to or an
interest in having protected102
People also have an interest to protect the other ‘rights to privacy’; yet society accepts
that these will be violated by the state (within the parameters of national legislation) if
such privacies pose a danger to the individual and/or to national security. The public
spaces are also monitored with camera technology whilst monitoring the movement of
both vehicle and people trac through the streets in order to have a very quick response
to incidents of terrorism perpetrated by (for example) knife-wielding psychopaths in the
United Kingdom.103 These psychopaths will have all their rights violated by the state
once in custody – without public outcry, forgetting that individual privacy in public
spaces was violated with surveillance by the state in order to provide some level of
security. This cannot possibly be dierent for state surveillance of social media (cyber
spaces) in order to have a reasonable response time for the purpose of security within
the context of national interest. Yet, people seem to be less accommodating when it
comes to their Facebook prole, Google browsing history or Twitter feed, forgetting
that they hand over hard-earned private funds to the state revenue collectors to fund
the state national security mandate. This nexus between public safety and individual
privacy concerning the collection and exploitation of SOCMINT could be balanced with
robust public consultation and unambiguous legislation because it is also in the public
interest (as taxpayers) to get the security benets locked up in SOCMINT opportunities.
Such a balance should specically consider the implications of state surveillance that
is conducted “with or without evidence or reasonable suspicion – that is, whether the
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surveillance is targeted or not”.104 Rønn and Søe (2019) write, “it might be morally
permissible to access social media proles in cases where the ocials have a reasonable
suspicion of criminal behaviour, it is much more morally problematic if the surveillance
is conducted on random citizens”.105 Public dismay about intrusions on privacy by the
state is thus less about what may be revealed than about being perceived as a criminal
or national security threat. The fact that informed consent locks the state out of the
available social media content does not minimise such perceptions of criminality of
national security threat; it probably increases it. This dilemma could potentially be
mitigated by robust legislation.
Privacy in cyberspace is therefore about securing legitimate access to personal content.106
It could also mean legitimate access to private content by the state if legislation allows
and regulates such access with unambiguous parameters of such legitimacy. The
restriction of access to private content in cyberspace (typically in the social media
space) is therefore a question of assigning or legislating for ’informed consent’107 for the
use of personal information. Such consent could be assumed implicit in legislation that
allows the state to access personal content for the purpose of national security because
in democratic societies, such as South Africa, the government is elected by the people to
develop and protect the interests of the people.
[W]e have to consent to others gaining access to our personal information.
Informed consent is a central concept when addressing the question of
informational privacy on social media platforms. Users give the specic
platform their consent to allow the companies to access and use their
personal information which is available on the specic platform. However,
if it is possible for the platforms to infer new personal information, as
argued above, it becomes dicult if not impossible to restrict access to and
control over the ow of such information.108
SOCMINT opportunities
To support the proposition that social media is a social common with SOCMINT
opportunities not yet experienced since the advent of intelligence as a construct,
DataReportal (2022) rated Google rst, YouTube second, and Facebook third as the
world’s most visited webpages, with Instagram and Twitter amongst the top ten109 in
October 2021. Facebook alone “had 2.910 billion monthly active users in October
2021” awarding it rst place among social media applications, internationally.110 The
importance of Facebook, as a SOCMINT content goldmine, is in the broad approach the
application has to social interaction. Facebook provides a platform that allows users to
disclose any personal data and preference in virtually any media format. This results in in-
depth conversations, photo sharing and video conversations, geo-positioning disclosure
(checking in) and access to (unless blocked) friend networks. Before D-Day landings
during World War II, the allied intelligence services used postcards and photographs
taken during holidays to construct an accurate picture of the (then) current state of the
area targeted for the landings.111
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The request [for such postcards and photos] came in 1942, with Brits
desperate to help the war eort sending in 30,000 packs of pictures of the
French coast within just 36 hours. Incredibly, by 1944, 10 million holiday
snaps and postcards, hotel brochures, letters and guidebooks had arrived
by post. 112
It took the allied intelligence services approximately two years to amass 10 million
items that graphically illustrated some part of the targeted landing area. In contrast, and
signicantly so, during 2013 (almost a decade ago now), Facebook achieved 350 million
photographs daily.113 To take it to a meta-level, circa 2020, it was said that the “chances
are you see (and forward) some of the more than 3.2 billion images and 720,000 hours of
video shared daily”.114 It is dicult to describe in words the opportunity locked up in that
volume of content. This gure does not include the SOCMINT in text conversations and
personal data continuously available and updated. The force multiplier or exponential
enabler that should be noted with this vast mega volume of SOCMINT is that it is
available on any smart device, anywhere and anytime, and now coming to the user via
cloud services.
Contextually, with access to this amount of content – continuously updated – intelligence
organisations worldwide can construct detailed target proles without placing these
organisations in harm’s way during content collection or sacricing plausible deniability
– as would be the case when using human intelligence (HUMINT). A meta-perspective
underscores the opportunities that SOCMINT facilitates:
[To] contribute decisively to public safety: identifying criminal activity;
giving early warning of disorder and threats to the public; or building
situational awareness in rapidly changing situations. As society develops
and adopts new ways to communicate and organise, it is vital that public
bodies, including law enforcement and the intelligence community, keep up
with these changes.115
This scenario is currently operationally active in the Russia–Ukraine war. Heidi
Swart (2021) writes, “[y]ou can download your personal information – over 50 data
categories – stored since you rst joined. Posts, messages, tags, pokes, searches, the
friended, the unfriended, login locations, facial recognition data.”11 6 The portfolio of
information categories collected and available on each individual Facebook user can
be found on the Facebook application under the Help section11 7 (a link is provided in
the endnotes). If you have access to this, then those more capable within the cyber
domain certainly also have access to this information. Facebook (amongst several other
very popular applications) therefore provides intelligence services and agencies with
vast volumes of content on all possible indicators with which threat proles can be
constructed. The SOCMINT opportunity load is so extensive that the National Guard
in Russia (Rosgvardia) is training Russian Army specialists as SOCMINT operations118
specialists. The Rosgvardia commander-in-chief rather candidly notes, “[t]he creation
of the National Guard is an answer to the threat posed by techniques of so-called non-
violent resistance.”119 From a very pragmatic perspective, SOCMINT therefore provides
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a credible source of content that could be used for the execution of national security
threat detection, according to the Russians. Russia is a member of BRICS; so is South
Africa. The BRICS partnership is consequently a perfect vehicle of international co-
operation to exchange expertise on the matter of SOCMINT. However, in view of the
recent Russia–Ukraine war and the considerable support Ukraine is getting from the
international community, it would be ill advised for South Africa to support Russia with
any kind of intelligence if South Africa is going to maintain a neutral position in this
conict.120
A similar, but dierent application within the intelligence environment, China’s Social
Credit System seek to regulate an individual behaviour-based score on the back of
various social interaction activities.121 Without getting into ethics and morality and
questions about good and bad behaviour, a more relevant question within the context of
this article would be what this has to do with SOCMINT. The answer and opportunity
for intelligence organisations are that individuals are vetted continuously on as many
aspects as possible within the parameters of the software and those regulating it.
Over time, this should oer a platform that provides transparency about those that are
trustworthy and those that are still working to get to that level. Very contentious? Not
really, as national nancial credit organisations do similar vetting, albeit more focused on
nancial management behaviour. The more incentive there is for the citizenry to live as
‘good citizens’ in the social media space, the more trustworthy the social media content
therefore becomes to the point where it supports SOCMINT as an A-level source.
Social media is also used eectively in humanitarian operations. Crowdsourcing is an
example where the public could provide real-time information on what is happening
on the ground in a crisis.122 Crowdsourcing has already been used eectively to outline
areas where maps of such areas were, for instance, outdated.123
Another opportunity is locked up in the ability to manipulate content online and almost
real-time as part of deception (a primary function within the counter-intelligence stable).
The downside is that every opportunity available to state intelligence organisations is
also available to every other state and non-state actor with adversarial intent. Several of
these are classied as national security threats.
When considering the social media characteristics as discussed by Stegen, the usefulness
of social media as a non-kinetic weapon is not a bridge too far. When aordable, user-
friendly, interactive content is available with no state censorship in play (implying that
distributed content “is not veried and false information can spread in this manner”124)
– adversarial or malicious activities can be directed at targets of any size. This can be
achieved by a variety of threat actors ranging from bored and/or inquisitive children to
sophisticated terrorist and/or extremist organisations.
SOCMINT national security threats
The constant ux of societal dynamics of which Bauman (2006)125 speaks, and which
is quoted by Stegen (2019)126, drives opportunity and threat. Changes within society
are natural phenomena and have many drivers, such as the creation of knowledge and
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technology. Change itself is not necessarily the threat, because change can be very
healthy – a case in point is the 1994 leap into democracy in South Africa. That change
was not driven by social media because social media did not exist yet. In contrast,
the changes associated with the Arab Spring revolutions (2010-2011) might have had
normal political and socio-economic triggers, but abnormal change propagation enabled
by social media.127 Although the triggers might have been typical during the Arab
Spring, the eective mining of social media content could have revealed the tempo of
the need for change, the planned tactics, the leadership involved, amongst several other
aspects. Intelligence analysists would use the typical - who, what, where, when, how,
what thereafter and with what eect- type of questions to support their analysis. Social
media content collected from, for example, Facebook could have provided signicant
content to each of these questions. Other national security threats that could typically
use the capabilities provided by social media are the spreading of fear through terrorism
and extremism, subversion, deception and misinformation from the covert action
playbook through the spreading of deep-fake content that could inuence the outcome
of an election or the credibility of national leadership. For example, espionage, through
the posting of simple and/or coded content, enables the discovery of new technology,
movement of armed forces, infrastructure vulnerabilities, resource shortages, human
rights abuses, to name but a few.
International regulation of SOCMINT
International intelligence organisations seem to be perplexed and, in some cases,
hamstrung by the legislative protection of privacy within the context of social media.
This is of obvious concern to these organisations since their mandate to provide the
state (and by implication the citizenry) with early warning about impending (national)
security threats and various social media applications could be used as a legitimately
privileged (and encrypted) communication medium between state or non-state threat
actors.
An example noted by Hassan (2020)128 of transnational data protection legislation is
the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of 2018 promulgated by the European
Union.129 Ben Wolford130 is of the opinion that the GDPR, comparatively speaking,
constitutes a signicantly robust data security regulation. The GPPR was promulgated
to guarantee personal data security EU-wide, with noteworthy nancial sanction power
as deterrent to any prospective data collector. The GDPR is a logical extension of the
European Convention of Human Rights (1950) that pursues personal privacy.131 In
the 1950s, up until the advent of the internet, such a guarantee might have seemed
plausible. This prospect changed signicantly with the development of the now mature
World Wide Web and its associated social media platforms. Hence, there is stronger
regulation by the EU, i.e., the GDPR. Ironically, it was a privacy dispute with Facebook
that triggered the development and promulgation of the GDPR.132 In fact, according to
Wolford (2021)133, the GDPR applies to any entity that processes any personal data of
any EU citizen, a truly transnational privacy regulation. This obviously has far-reaching
implications for the operationalisation of the SOCMINT construct, since the successful
execution of SOCMINT is premised on access to social media content. The GDPR
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could also be perceived as a deterrent against the United States breaching the privacy of
European citizens premised on the fact that most of the social media platforms originate
from the United States.
At risk of entering a discussion about the entire GDPR regulation, it is worth mentioning
the data protection principles contained in the regulation (Article 5(1–2)), namely:
Lawfulness, fairness and transparency – Processing must be lawful, fair,
and transparent to the data subject. Purpose limitation – You must process
data for the legitimate purposes specied explicitly to the data subject when
you collected it. Data minimization – You should collect and process only
as much data as absolutely necessary for the purposes specied. Accuracy
– You must keep personal data accurate and up to date. Storage limitation
– You may only store personally identifying data for as long as necessary
for the specied purpose. Integrity and condentiality – Processing
must be done in such a way as to ensure appropriate security, integrity,
and condentiality (e.g. by using encryption). Accountability – The data
controller is responsible for being able to demonstrate GDPR compliance
with all of these principles.134
The very rst principle is already problematic for the intelligence organisation that
seeks to maintain secrecy of its intent and targets. For the same reason as the rst, the
second principle is also contentious within the domain of intelligence collection and the
complexity of national security. The third principle is aligned with the responsibility
of intelligence collectors. The fourth principle, however, is out of kilter with how
intelligence processors manage their content. They would typically hold onto that
content for as long as possible and hopefully be able to keep on updating the content
to keep it relevant. Security, integrity and condentiality of the collected data are not
hampering factors. However, because several of the principles are not aligned with how
intelligence organisation’s function, the last principle cannot be guaranteed. This briey
illustrates the privacy–national security nexus.
Social media legislation could be perceived as widening the chasm between the two
competing social imperatives, i.e., privacy as a human right and security as a human
right. The right to privacy according to the GDPR are –
• The right to be informed
• The right of access
• The right to rectication
• The right to erasure
• The right to restrict processing
• The right to data portability
• The right to object
• Rights in relation to automated decision making and proling.135
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Again, it is clear how these rights obliterate the potency of SOCMINT within the context
of national security.
When considering the treatment of SOCMINT as an intelligence content domain, the
United States experiences similar popular resistance against the surveillance of US
citizens’ social media. Law enforcement agencies use private service providers, such
as Media Sonar, to survey social media and then just buy the data for SOCMINT
purposes.136 This resulted in social media companies, such as Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram, adding specications to their terms and conditions that explicitly prohibit the
release and use of their data for surveillance purposes.137
Then there is the abuse of the privilege by the state. Heidi Swart (2017) positions this
in a statement - “we as citizens have no way to eectively watch over government’s
use of all-seeing cyberspying technologies.”138 All democracies grapple with this social
dilemma. For South Africa, the dilemma is currently quite vivid due to the state capture
saga. Let us therefore consider the specics of the SA legislative framework governing
the use of social media content.
South African legislation aecting the regulation of SOCMINT
Social media is not a foreign concept to South Africa. The following statistics illustrate
graphically use of the various social media applications within South Africa:
Whatsapp
YouTube
Facebook
Instagram
Facebook Messenger
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
TikTok
Snapchat
Skype
Telegram
Reddit
WeChat
Tumblr
Badoo
100%
75%
50%
25%
0%
93.2% 92.4%
86.7%
70.2% 64.7% 59.2%
49% 44.7%
37.5%
30.4% 27.4%
19.7% 18% 16.7% 13.2% 11.1%
Figure 1: Most used social media platforms in South Africa, users aged 16 to 64
(mid-2021)
Source: BusinessTech (2021)139
Comparatively speaking, South Africa is therefore not dierent concerning the trends
in social media usage. South Africa has also attempted regulating access to and usage
of personal information available due to state and non-state organisational process
requirements for registration, authentication and transparency. This does not dier from
the attempts by certain European authorities and countries further aeld (for example
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France) to secure and guarantee privacy. Let us now review the relevant South African
legislation that attempts to guarantee privacy as a constitutional right and legislation that
mandate the SA intelligence services and agencies to conduct intelligence operations in
national interest.
Collectively, the following legal frameworks are intent on addressing the mischief
associated with the protection of information. The question is: how does this aect the
state mandate to use all available social media content in terms of the SA Constitution
and the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (the POPIA) in the interest of
SA national security and security within international co-operation?
South African intelligence legislation
During (or ideally before) a national security dilemma or simply in the national interest,
SA intelligence services and agencies hold legislative mandates to furnish state decision-
makers with relevant and in-time intelligence. SOCMINT is one, and developing into
a signicant source of content that, once processed, could provide the intelligence
products that could inform robust national security-related decisions. SOCMINT is also
a relatively cost-eective intelligence collection method. Questions to be considered in
this regard are:
• Which SA legislation aects the use of SOCMINT by SA intelligence
services and agencies?
• Does SA legislation provide crisp guidance on the use of SOCMINT within
the domestic national security context?
• Does the legislation also provide sanctions for transgression?
First, let us consider the SA (national security-related) intelligence mandates as
legislated.
The Constitution140 provides for the establishment of intelligence services in Chapter 11
(s 209–210): “(1) Any intelligence service, other than any intelligence division of the
defence force or police service, may be established only by the President, as head of the
national executive, and only in terms of national legislation.”141 The establishment of the
South African State Security Agency (SSA) brought together the National Intelligence
Agency (NIA) and the SA Secret Services under central command.142 The National
Strategic Intelligence Act 39 of 1994 (as amended)143 and the Defence Act 42 of 2002
establish the respective SA intelligence services and agencies that are tasked with
national security intelligence functions.
Section 2 of the National Strategic Intelligence Act 39 of 1994 describes the function of
the intelligence services and agencies as to collect and process “intelligence” that would
enable responses to an identied “threat or potential threat to the security of the Republic
or its people”.144 The following contextual denitions of intelligence are applicable –
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“‘counter-intelligence’ means measures and activities conducted, instituted
or taken to impede and to neutralise the eectiveness of foreign or
hostile intelligence operations, to protect intelligence and any classied
information, to conduct security screening investigations and to counter
subversion, treason, sabotage and terrorism aimed at or against personnel,
strategic installations or resources of the Republic;
‘crime intelligence’ means intelligence used in the prevention of crime or to
conduct criminal investigations and to prepare evidence for the purpose of
law enforcement and the prosecution of oenders;
‘departmental intelligence’ means intelligence about any threat or potential
threat to the national security and stability of the Republic which falls
within the functions of a department of State, and includes intelligence
needed by such department in order to neutralise such a threat;
‘domestic intelligence’ means intelligence on any internal activity, factor or
development which is detrimental to the national stability of the Republic,
as well as threats or potential threats to the constitutional order of the
Republic and the safety and the well-being of its people;
‘national security intelligence’ means intelligence which relates to or may
be relevant to the assessment of any threat or potential threat to the security
of the Republic in any eld;
‘national strategic intelligence’ means comprehensive, integrated and
estimative intelligence on all the current and long-term aspects of national
security which are of special concern to strategic decision-making and the
formulation and implementation of policy and strategy at national level.”145
Every denition emphasises the use of intelligence for the purpose of national security
threat responses within the context of state and human security paradigms, i.e., decisions,
policy, strategy, planning, and others. The SSA mandate therefore relates to the provision
of pre-emptive intelligence to the SA government of –
[Any impending] domestic and foreign threats or potential threats to
national stability, the constitutional order, and the safety and well-being of
our people. This allows the government to implement policies to deal with
potential threats and better understand existing threats, and, thus, improve
their policies.146
The mandate for military intelligence functions is no dierent; it just has a particular focus
on military operations with the same national aim – “‘domestic military intelligence’
means intelligence required for the planning and conduct of military operations within
the Republic to ensure security and stability for its people”.147
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It should be noted that no detailed description of the type of intelligence is provided,
i.e., the primary collection disciplines – OSINT, SIGINT, HUMINT, GEOINT, signals
intelligence (SIGINT), measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) and
SOCMINT. It is assumed that all the intelligence content domains are included in the
denitions above and that the state (i.e., SSA and defence intelligence) will utilise all
the content from any of these domains to assess the “threats or potential threats to the
constitutional order of the Republic and the safety and the well-being of its people”148.
There is, however, other more recent legislation that needs consideration when it
concerns the right to privacy as per the SA Constitution.
Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of
Communication-related Information Act (RICA) 70 of 2002 as
amended149
RICA was promulgated to curb mischief that relates to the interception of
communication.150 This communication must take place on specied radio frequencies
within the frequency spectrum, and RICA is positioned to regulate the telecommunication
industry that does not “have the capability to be intercepted. RICA was also promulgated
to regulate “certain communication-related information”,151 typically by means of the
Oce for Interception Centres (to be established). Thus, the intent of RICA is clear.”152
RICA would have provided the state with broad legislative cover to conduct intelligence
operations within the SIGINT and SOCMINT domains. However, RICA also seeks to
regulate how intelligence services and agencies go about their business. This was found
wanting by the Constitutional Court, leading to the SA Constitutional Court ruling on 3
February 2021 that the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of
Communication-Related Information Act (RICA) is unconstitutional. The court argued
that it did not provide “adequate safeguards to protect the right to privacy”. According to
BusinessTech153, this happened after Sam Sole, a journalist who had been placed under
surveillance by the SSA, challenged the constitutionality of the act. The Constitution
Court believed communication interception and surveillance based on the provisions
of RICA comprise a “highly invasive violation of privacy, and thus infringes on section
14 of the Constitution”.154 The court did acknowledge that state surveillance is of
importance, but that the right to privacy was coupled to the right to dignity. This attests
to the conceptualisation by Rønn and Søe (2019) that privacy is a cluster phenomenon,
i.e., the various types of privacy invariably aect each other in an integrated manner.155
This Constitutional Court ruling sets a precedent for intelligence operations within the
domain of SOCMINT and would typically want SOCMINT operations to be a last resort.
However, not all communication is equal. When an intelligence organisation decides to
intercept voice and social media communication platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram
and Twitter, it might become problematic from a ‘right to privacy’ perspective. These
types of social media have strict password and encryption protection (informed consent
controls) and can probably not be regarded as public domain or OSINT. RICA is,
however, not the only SA legislation that was promulgated to regulate mischief involving
the communication sector, its users and the security sector.
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Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA)156
The POPI Act (POPIA) has very similar wording and structure to that of the European
GDPR. The mischief that the POPIA (section 1) is endeavouring to regulate comprises
infringements on the right to privacy, the ow of information domestically and “across
international borders”, lawful processing of personal information, and recourse where
this was infringed upon.157 POPIA (section 4) provides the parameters for the lawful
use of personal information. Typically, principles of accountability, openness, quality
safeguards, limitations for processing, and participation of the individual are addressed
and then dealt with and addressed in various other sections of the POPIA.158
The rights of everyone in terms of personal information and exclusion are addressed
in POPIA (sections 5 and 6). Without being trapped in a discussion about what the
individual rights to privacy are, let us focus on what is excluded by the POPIA. Section
6 addresses exclusions of particular importance. Within the context of this article, these
are reected in section 6(1)(c)(i) –
6. (1) This Act does not apply to the processing of personal information –
(c) by or on behalf of a public body – (i) which involves national security,
including activities that are aimed at assisting in the identication of the
nancing of terrorist and related activities, defence or public safety; or (ii)
the purpose of which is the prevention, detection, including assistance in
the identication of the proceeds of unlawful activities and the combating
of money laundering activities, investigation or proof of oences, the
prosecution of oenders or the execution of sentences or security measures,
to the extent that adequate safeguards have been established in legislation
for the protection of such personal information.159
A specic calibration of this exclusion for national security purposes is section 6(2),
which points the reader to the Protection of Constitutional Democracy against Terrorist
and Related Activities Act 33 of 2004 (section 4), “Terrorist and related activities”.
The POPIA (section 7) refers to the “Exclusion for journalistic, literary or artistic
purposes”, which is also outside the discussion about SOCMINT and intelligence
organisations and their operational needs. However, with the exclusions expressed in
POPIA (section 7), another channel of access to SOCMINT is opened to intelligence
organisations that are experts in HUMINT collection. It is also common knowledge
that some of the most capable intelligence organisations have journalism as their core
business. Partnerships between intelligence organisations and media organisations are
common.
From an SA perspective, personal information disclosed and distributed via social media
is in the public domain, but that does not automatically render such information free to
use. That use is regulated by the POPIA.160 The state, however, retains the right to access
and process personal information – including social media content – for the purpose of
securing the nation against specied national security threats.161,162 The only caveat is
that the SA intelligence services and agencies are responsible for the promulgation of
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departmental regulations – or “adequate safeguards”163 – to prevent the abuse of this
privilege extended by POPIA. The eectivity of such regulations (if in existence) has
not yet been tested in court.
Criminal Procedures Act 51 of 1977 (as amended)
The relevance of the Criminal Procedures Act164 is in the authorisation of surveillance of
individuals. This includes the surveillance of individual social media accounts. It thus
remains an issue of the right to privacy and whether that right carries more weight than
the ‘wellbeing of the nation’ from a national security threat perspective.
Recommendations
Omand oers two approaches to the implementation of SOCMINT regulation. One
avenue would be with ‘open SOCMINT’, which is characteristically non-intrusive in
nature due to the requirement for consent to access any social media account165. If such
consent cannot be secured, further use of any account content becomes restricted from
a privacy perspective.166 There is thus a reasonable expectation by the user that private
content will remain just that. Content that is collected by ‘open SOCMINT’ is therefore
essentially OSINT, and organisations that collect such content should be expected to be,
from a UK perspective –
[As] transparent as possible that:
• all such collection, retention, and sharing policies are publicised and justied
• the reason why the information is collected is publicised
• the information commissioner should monitor the development
of this form of information processing to ensure that it conforms with the
principles of the Data Protection Act [2018], including being fairly and
lawfully processed in accordance with individuals’ rights.167
The second avenue could be with “intrusive interception and surveillance” 168. The rst
avenue does not seem to pose much challenge in terms of regulation, and essentially
refers to OSINT. However, the second avenue is the approach that separates SOCMINT
from OSINT. For this avenue to be institutionalised in legislation and departmental
policy, Omand (2012) envisages six principles, providing a rst-order regulatory
foundation for SOCMINT collection and exploitation:
[1] [T]here must be sucient, sustainable cause; [2] there must be integrity
of motive; [3] the methods used must be proportionate and necessary; [4]
there must be right authority, validated by external oversight; [5] recourse
to secret intelligence must be a last resort if more open sources can be used;
[and 6] there must be reasonable prospect of success.169
Principle 5, alluding to the use of SOCMINT as a last resort, is counter-productive.
Because social media is currently (and will be in future) the rst choice for communication
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it would be prudent for intelligence services and agencies to make SOCMINT their rst
port of call.
Somewhere between the need for privacy and national security there consequently
should be a Venn diagram moment that provides space for the articulation of policy
recommendations that protect the user from the state and the state from the user. Lever
(2016) 170, Rønn and Søe (2019)171 and others conceptualised some nuanced arguments
about the privacy–security nexus. Lever (2016) argues from the perspective of democratic
rule that states must have the ability to “hold associations to account for their actions” 172,
merging the right to privacy and the mandate to provide security into a requirement for
operational freedom within the limits set by legislation (which invariably will be based
on issues of ethics, morality, rights and freedoms). She further states:
Constraints on privacy are necessary to protect ‘the rule of law’, because
we cannot form, pass, judge and execute laws democratically without
devices such as the secret ballot, or legal rights of condential judgement,
information and association, which enable people carefully to explore
alone, and with others they know and trust, what they should do as citizens.
Our legitimate interests in privacy are not negligible, or inherently of lesser
importance than our interests in security.173
This is further calibrated by the contention that individual “interests in privacy, then,
can be varied and inescapably tied to our sense of ourselves as moral agents. They
are not, therefore of obviously lesser importance than our interests in self-preservation
– individual, or collective”.174 “Public acceptability lies at the heart of any form of
intelligence collection, and this can only be secured if SOCMINT is properly used
and properly authorized.”175 SOCMINT and OSINT should therefore be separate
collection domains to protect the imperative of the right to privacy and national security
requirements better and in a balanced manner by means of unambiguous national
regulation in the interest of the citizen.
Conclusion
South Africa is a very large producer, distributer and consumer of social media content
from both a public and a state intelligence perspective. Intelligence services can benet
– and are probably already benetting – from the use and exploitation of SOCMINT.
However, there is a growing concern from the public about the negative consequences
that such collection and exploitation could have on an individual’s right to privacy. This
is also an international concern.
Given the legal complexities of SOCMINT, it is proposed that SOCMINT should be
viewed as a new collection discipline, and South Africa should embark on a process to
provide clear legislative guidelines for the collection and exploitation of SOCMINT.
South Africa is (at present) still in the unique position to use SOCMINT and could use
SOCMINT in intelligence collaboration with international partners that do not have that
liberty. Due regard should be exercised in this regard because of the eect such sharing
might have on possible international relations.
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From a state mandate perspective, SA intelligence services and agencies are clearly
mandated within several distinct pieces of legislation to conduct all aspects of
intelligence domestically and in foreign locations. Considering the existence and
acceptance of SOCMINT, as a ‘relatively new’ phenomenon when compared to the rest
of the primary collection disciplines (OSINT, SIGINT, HUMINT, GEOINT, MASINT),
SA intelligence services and agencies are permitted to mine and exploit social media
content to produce SOCMINT for the purpose of decision-making within the context of
national security. Such actions are calibrated by specications in the POPIA.
Grounded in the fact that the SOCMINT content volume is considerable and expanding
exponentially, South Africa should establish, within its respective intelligence services
and agencies that specically manage collection and exploitation of SOCMINT, policy
guidelines for the use of SOCMINT that distinguish between what can be dened as
OSINT and what is quintessentially SOCMINT. It would also be incumbent on these
organisations to ensure that robust construct denitions are included in departmental
policy, stipulating the dierences in requirements for the legal usage of OSINT
vs SOCMINT. Those dierences do exist and should be formalised post haste.
Recommended in this regard is that SOCMINT be conceptualised and institutionalised
in departmental policy as the product of privileged (i.e., access authorisation required)
social media content analysis, whereas OSINT is the product of analysed public content
(i.e., no access authority required). The primary dierence is locked into the legislated
imperatives of privacy versus national security; hence, the SOCMINT–OSINT nexus.
Consideration should be given to govern the collection and exploitation of SOCMINT
by means of (possibly) several operating principles that ensure maximum protection
of privacy without eroding the mandate of the state to ensure national security. Such
principles could include requirements for a clear legal case showing cause and evidence
of operational response proportionality. These issues should be in an executive order (the
format of which could be described in legislation) to ensure boundary management and
oversight. As with requirements for covert action operations, a successful conclusion of
the operation should be achievable with clear consequences spelled out if the operation
fails.
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67 K Alspach. “Going on oense: Ukraine forms an ‘IT army’, Nvidia hacks back”. Venturebeat.
26 February 022. <https://venturebeat.com/2022/02/26/going-on-oense-ukraine-
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68 The Conversation. “Guns, tanks and Twitter: How Russia and Ukraine are using social media
as the war drags on”. 5 April 2022. <https://theconversation.com/guns-tanks-and-
twitter-how-russia-and-ukraine-are-using-social-media-as-the-war-drags-on-180131>
Accessed on 18 April 2022. There is a wealth of such content available on the World
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69 JI Stegen. “Social media intelligence (SOCMINT) within the South African context: A
theoretical and strategic framework for the national security environment”. PhD
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70 Schram (2018) and Cohn (2011), cited in Ibid., p. 194.
71 Schram (2018) and Mayeld (2008), cited in Ibid.
72 D Omand, J Bartlett & C Miller. “Introducing social media intelligence (SOCMINT)”.
Intelligence & National Security 27/6. 2012. 801–823. doi:
10.1080/02684527.2012.716965
73 Britannica. 2021. “Internet – computer network”. <https://www.britannica.com/technology/
Internet> Accessed on 17 January 2022.
74 Ibid.
75 MY Abuhashesh, H Al-Dmour, RE Masa’deh, A Salman, R Al-Dmour, M Boguszewicz-
Kreft & QN Alamaireh. “The role of social media in raising public health awareness
during the pandemic COVID-19: An international comparative study”. Informatics 80.
2021. 1-19.
76 R Momi. 2021. “SOCMINT: Social media intelligence a new discipline?” Tradecraft. 12
November 2021. <https://www.greydynamics.com/socmint-social-media-intelligence-
a-new-discipline/> Accessed on 18 April 2022. Perspectives of Omand et al. op. cit., p.
801 is discussed.
77 Omand et al. op. cit., p. 801.
78 “Arab Spring, wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that took place in the Middle
East and North Africa beginning in 2010 and 2011, challenging some of the
region’s entrenched authoritarian regimes. The wave began when protests
in Tunisia and Egypt toppled their regimes in quick succession, inspiring similar
attempts in other Arab countries. Not every country saw success in the protest
movement, however, and demonstrators expressing their political and economic
grievances were often met with violent crackdowns by their countries’ security
forces. For detailed coverage of the Arab Spring in individual countries, see Jasmine
Revolution (Tunisia), Egypt Uprising of 2011, Yemen Uprising of 2011–12, Libya
Revolt of 2011, and Syrian Civil War.” Britannica. 2021. “Arab Spring - pro-
democracy protests”. <https://www.britannica.com/event/Arab-Spring> Accessed on
16 May 2022.
79 G Wolfsfeld, E Segev & T Sheafer. “Social media and the Arab Spring: Politics
comes rst”. The International Journal of Press/Politics 18/2. 2013. 115–137. doi:
10.1177/1940161212471716.
ENDNOTES
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80 BA Senekal. “SOCMINT: The monitoring of social media for community safety purposes
within a big data framework in South Africa with specic reference to Orania”. Litnet.
14 November 2018. <https://www.litnet.co.za/socmint-the-monitoring-of-social-
media-for-community-safety-purposes-within-a-big-data-framework-in-south-africa-
with-specic-reference-to-orania/> Accessed on 18 April 2022.
81 H Brown, E Guskin & A Mitchell. “The role of social media in the Arab uprisings”. Pew
Research Centre. 28 November 2012. <https://www.pewresearch.org/
journalism/2012/11/28/role-social-media-arab-uprisings/> Accessed on 17 January
2022.
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid.
84 A Smidi & S Shahin. “Social media and social mobilisation in the Middle East”. India
Quarterly 73/2. 2017. 196–209.
85 NA Hassan. “A guide to social media intelligence gathering (SOCMINT)”. Secjuice. 21 June
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86 KT Davis. “SOCMINT: The cutting edge of the invisible line”. Master’s thesis. American
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87 H Swart. “Government surveillance of social media is rife: Guess who’s selling your
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04-25-government-surveillance-of-social-media-is-rife-guess-whos-selling-your-
data/#:~:text=And%20that%20includes%20the%20South,to%20release%20your%20
private%20data.&text=Ultimately%2C%20the%20state%20can%20use,right%20
up%20to%20your%20door> Accessed on 14 January 2022.
88 MM Lowenthal & RM Clark. The ve disciplines of intelligence collection. Los Angeles:
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89 T Constantin-Sorin. “Social media intelligence”. Perconcordiam.com. 2019. <https://
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90 Momi op. cit.
91 Constantin-Sorin op. cit.
92 IA Ivan, IC Anamaria, LR Codruta & GM Nicolae. “Social media intelligence: Opportunities
and limitations”. CES working papers. Massachusetts: Centre for European Studies,
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, 2015, 506. See also R Norton-Taylor. “Former
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Accessed on 30 May 2014.
93 Lowenthal & Clark op. cit.
94 KT Davis. “SOCMINT: The cutting edge of the invisible line”. Master’s thesis. American
Public University System, 2015
95 Ivan, Anamaria, Codruta & Nicolae op cit.
96 T Constantin-Sorin. “Social Media Intelligence By Using Facebook, Twitter and other sites to
combat organized crime”. per Cordium, Journal of European Security and Defense
Issues, 9(4). 2019. 18-23.
97 Privacy International. “Social media intelligence”. 23 October 2017. <https://
privacyinternational.org/explainer/55/social-media-intelligence#:~:text=Social%20
media%20intelligence%20(SOCMINT)%20refers,such%20as%20Facebook%20
or%20Twitter> Accessed on 18 April 2022.
98 KV Rønn & SO Søe. “Is social media intelligence private? Privacy in public and the nature of
social media intelligence”. Intelligence and National Security 34/3. 2019. 363.
41
South African Journal of Military Studies
99 Ibid., 363.
100 Tavani, “Informational Privacy”; DeCew, Privacy; and Solove, Understanding
Privacy in Rønn & Søe op cit.
101 Rønn & Søe op cit, p. 363.
102 Rønn & Søe op cit, p. 363.
103 D Mercer & A Culbertson. “Five minutes of terror: How the London Bridge attack unfolded”.
Sky News. 4 June 2021. <https://news.sky.com/story/how-the-london-bridge-terror-
attack-unfolded-11874155> Accessed on 17 April 2022.
104 Rønn & Søe op. cit., p. 374.
105 Ibid., p. 374.
106 Ibid., p. 365.
107 Ibid. Discussed on pp. 365, 369, 370 and 374.
108 Ibid., p.365.
109 DataReportal. 2022. “Facebook stats and trends”. <https://datareportal.com/essential-
facebook-stats#:~:text=Here's%20what%20the%20latest%20data,)%3A%20
2.910%20billion%20(October%202021)&text=Number%20of%20people%20
who%20use,)%3A%201.930%20billion%20(October%202021)&text=Share%20
of%20Facebook's%20monthly%20active,%3A%2066%25%20(October%202021)>
Accessed on 19 January 2021.
110 Ibid.
111 P Caddick-Adams. “The fascinating story of how ordinary Brits’ holiday postcards helped
win D-Day”. The Sun. 6 June 2019. <https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9229653/d-day-
british-postcards-helped-win/> Accessed on 19 January 2022.
112 Ibid.
113 C Smith. “Facebook users are uploading 350 million new photos each day”. Business Insider.
18 September 2013. <https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-350-million-photos-
each-day-2013-9?IR=T> Accessed on 17 January 2022.
114 TJ Thomson, D Angus & P Dootson. “3.2 billion images and 720,000 hours of video are
shared online daily. Can you sort real from fake?” The Conversation. 3 November
2020. <https://theconversation.com/3-2-billion-images-and-720-000-hours-of-video-
are-shared-online-daily-can-you-sort-real-from-fake-148630> Accessed on 17 January
2022.