UNDERSTANDING THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT
Intelligence on the digital environment
Understand what is happening, how it is changing and what requires attention.
happenschangesrequires attention
The digital environment is made up of a continuous stream of publications, events, actors, conversations, relationships and signals that change over time.
Observing that environment reveals what is present. Intelligence seeks to go further: connecting information, preserving context, identifying changes and understanding what they mean in relation to a specific need.
CONTEXT
An environment that is constantly changing.
A single publication may seem insignificant. A shift in narrative, the emergence of new actors, a recurring topic or the spread of an event can take on a different meaning when viewed together and over time.
Understanding the digital environment requires preserving not only the content, but also its context, provenance, timing and relationships with other elements.
Social listening helps observe mentions and topics in available sources. Analysis adds comparison and context: this activity does not, on its own, represent public opinion or voting intention, and interpreting it requires human oversight.
- Actors
- Narratives
- Events
- Relationships
- Time
- Evidence
FROM SIGNAL TO MEANING
Seeing signals is not the same as understanding them.
Observation
What is present?
Monitoring
What changes, and how often?
Analysis
How are the elements connected?
Intelligence
What does it mean in relation to a specific need?
What requires attention?
DIMENSIONS
Understanding requires connecting multiple dimensions.
- 01
Actors and entities
Who appears, participates, communicates, responds or is connected to an event.
- 02
Narratives
Which topics, arguments, interpretations or discursive frames are circulating.
- 03
Events
Which events generate activity or change observable behavior.
- 04
Relationships
Which connections can be identified between actors, topics, sources or events.
- 05
Change over time
How the presence, intensity, narrative or relationship between elements changes over time.
- 06
Evidence
Which information supports each observation or conclusion, and where it comes from.
CHANGE OVER TIME
A single signal says little. How it changes can say much more.
The meaning of a digital signal rarely depends on its existence alone. It also matters when it appears, how often it recurs, what happened before and after, which actors became involved and how the conversation changed.
The time dimension makes it possible to observe continuity, disruption, growth, decline, recurrence and spread.
- T0
Emerges
signal
- T1
Persists
repetition
- T2
Changes
variation
- T3
Spreads
expansion
- T4
Requires attention
relevancia
EVIDENCE AND TRACEABILITY
Understanding also means being able to return to the evidence.
A conclusion is more valuable when the information supporting it can be reviewed. Preserving provenance, context and timing makes it possible to trace a finding back to the original evidence and assess how an interpretation was developed.
- Finding
- Analysis
- Evidence
- Original source
RELEVANCE
Not everything visible deserves the same attention.
Relevance depends on the mission, the information requirement and the context. A signal may be irrelevant to one assignment and critical to another.
Producing intelligence therefore requires connecting observations to defined objectives and to what truly needs to be known.
- Signal
- what we observe
- Context
- where and how it happens
- Need
- what we need to know
- Relevance
- what deserves attention
PSID
PSID organizes intelligence around a need.
PSID makes it possible to structure monitoring of the digital environment around specific objectives, actors, topics, sources and information requirements.
The platform brings together evidence from different open sources, preserves context and timing, and supports analysis of relationships, narratives, events and change to help produce useful knowledge.
PSID does not aim to observe everything. It seeks to help make sense of what matters to a specific mission.
Explore PSID's capabilities →- Information requirement
- Intelligence Work
- Actors · Topics · Sources
- Evidence
- Analysis
- Knowledge
INTELLIGENCE CYCLE
From the environment to the decision.
PSID supports a continuous process that organizes information, from directing the effort to turning it into useful products for decision-making.
Direction
Defines what needs to be known and with what priority.
Collection
Obtains the information needed to address the requirement.
Analysis
Connects information and context to produce findings.
Production
Turns findings into understandable products.
Dissemination
Delivers intelligence to the user who needs to act or decide.
THE RELATIONSHIP WITH OSINT
OSINT provides the sources. Intelligence provides context and meaning.
Open-source intelligence makes it possible to obtain and use publicly accessible information. Intelligence on the digital environment broadens that perspective by focusing on how information connects, changes and becomes meaningful in relation to a specific need.
Learn what OSINT is →Observation reveals what is happening.Understanding reveals why it matters.
PSIDTimely insight into the digital environment.