Using Target Audience Analysis To Aid Strategic Level Decisionmaking

The author explains how sophisticated social science research and behavioral profiling can be used to warn us of impeding issues and how that information might be used by senior strategy makers as a tool for testing and refining strategy. He explains the science behind what he calls population intelligence (Popint) and makes a compelling case that the science of Target Audience Analysis (Taa) is now so well advanced that it must become a key component of future strategic decision-making. Military leaders, Federal, state, and municipal law enforcement professionals,communication strategists, intelligence community, and homeland security professionals may be interested in this behavioral profiling strategy to augment their operations.Criminal justice, military science, homeland security, and psychology, especially behavioral and forensic psychology students at the undergraduate and graduate levels may be interested in this volume.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

STEVE TATHAM is the Director of Operations at IOTA-Global Ltd, a specialist civilian Information Operations company and is the contracted subject matter expert for Strategic Communication and Target Audience Analysis at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Centre of Excellence for Strategic Communication in Latvia. He resigned from the United Kingdom's (UK) Armed Forces in July 2014.

On leaving, he was the UK's longest continuously serving Officer in Information Activities. Between 1998 and 2003, he worked in Media Operations, covering conflicts in Sierra Leone (2000), Afghanistan (2001), and Iraq (2003), where he was public spokesman for the invasion. Between 2003 and 2013, he worked in Information Operations and Psychological Operations. Dr. Tatham was the Commanding Officer of 15 (UK) Psychological Operations Group from 2010 to 2013, during which time he deployed on multiple occasions to Afghanistan; was involved at the operational level in operations in Libya and has deployed to East Africa in an advisory role. His final military appointment was as the Special Information Operations project officer in the UK Ministry of Defence Operations Directorate. In 2007, he advised the then commander of British Forces in Afghanistan on influence operations when the strategically vital town of Musa Qala was retaken by British and Afghan forces. The Pentagon later described that operation as the "single best thing to come out of Afghanistan."

Dr. Tatham is the author of two books: Losing Arab Hearts & Minds. The Coalition, Al-Jazeera and Muslim Public Opinion (Hurst & Co, 2006) and Behavioural Conflict: Why Understanding People's Motivations Will Prove Decisive In Future Conflict (Military Studies Press, 2012). Dr. Tatham holds an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. in international relations, both fo­cusing on ideas of influence and strategic communication in conflict areas.