‘No, we don’t know where Tupac is’: critical intelligence studies and the CIA on social media

ABSTRACT

Since joining Twitter in 2014, the CIA has used social media to show an uncharacteristically humorous side to an institution more commonly associated with espionage and secrecy. In light of this representation, we analyse the CIA’s tweets and public responses to them by building upon recent work on critical intelligence studies. We argue that the CIA’s use of social media is a continuation of the CIA’s intervention in popular culture that is vital to the legitimation of the Agency’s actions. In doing so we demonstrate the contribution that discourse analysis can make to intelligence studies in the digital age.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Guardian, “CIA Sends First Tweet”.

2. PR Daily, “CIA hit Storytelling Stride”.

3. Dover and Goodman, Spinning Intelligence.

4. McLoughlin et al., “Hello World: GCHQ Twitter”.

5. For example in America there is the Open Government Initiative and Directive of the Obama administration. Landon Murray, “Social Media and US intelligence,” 7.

6. CIA Director John Brennan in BBC, ‘CIA launches Twitter’, unpaginated.

7. Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? & The Cultural Cold War.

8. Zegart, “Spytainment”.

9. Bean, “Critical/Cultural Intelligence Studies”; de Werd, “Critical Intelligence Studies”.

10. see, Krause and Williams, Critical Security Studies.

11. Taylor et al., “Fearful Engine of Power,” 116–117.

12. Weldes et al., “Constructing Insecurity,” 2.

13. Campbell, Writing Security.

14. Doty, “Foreign Policy Social Construction”.

15. Buluc, “The Role Of Discourse”; MacDonald and Hunter, “Discourse of Post-9/11”.

16. Hunter and MacDonald, “Security Discipline”.

17. Jackson et al., “Militarization 2.0,” 3.

18. Connell and Galasinski, “Cleaning up its act,” 169.

19. Ibid., 170.

20. Ibid., 169.

21. See note 1 above.

22. Oremus, “CIA on Twitter”.

23. Groll, “CIA’s First Tweet”.

24. Aldrich, “Regulation by Revelation?” 17.

25. Johnson, “CIA and the Media”; Hewitt and Lucas, “All the Secrets”; and Willmetts, In Secrecy’s Shadow and ‘Cultural Turn in Intelligence.

26. Jenkins, The CIA in Hollywood; Barrett et al., Hollywood and theCIA; and Dover and Goodman, Spinning Intelligence.

27. Jenkins, The CIA in Hollywood.

28. Der Derian, Virtuous War.

29. Kumar and Kundnani, “Imagining National Security”.

30. See note 27 above.

31. McLoughlin et al., “Hello World: GCHQ Twitter”; Landon Murray, “Social Media and U.S. Intelligence”.

32. Joachim and Schneiker, “A Gender Discourse Analysis,” 500.

33. Ibid, 241.

34. Ibid., 243.

35. Ibid., 242.

36. Doty, ‘Foreign Policy Social Construction,” 306.

37. Rasmussen, “Welcome to Twitter”.

38. Crilley and Chatterje-Doody, “From Russia with lols”.

39. Rasmussen, “Marketable Ordinariness”.

40. Wood and McGovern, “Memetic copaganda”.

41. Ibid.

42. Connell and Galinski, “Cleaning up its Act,” 183.

43. Jeffords, Hard Bodies; Boyle, “Rescuing Masculinity.”

44. Howards and MacDonald, Emergence of Security Discourse; Campbell, Writing Security; and Weldes et al., Constructing Insecurity.

45. See note 27 above.

46. Ironically, Tupac’s 1991 song ‘I Don’t Give A Fuck’ features the lyric ‘Fuck you to the CIA.’

47. Cohn, ‘Sex and Death’, 698.

48. Saunders, Who paid the piper?; Van Veeren, “Interrogating 24”; and Willmetts, In Secrecy’s Shadow.

49. BBC, “Bin Laden Death.”

50. Crilley et al., “Tweeting the Russian revolution.”

51. Know Your Meme, “Ceiling Cat.”

52. Crilley, “Where we at?”; Pears, “Ask the Audience.”

53. See note 7 above.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rhys Crilley

Rhys Crilley is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. His current research explores the politics of nuclear weapons through an attention to narratives and emotions in policies of deterrence and strategies for disarmament. Rhys has published on the intersections of popular culture, social media and war in several journal articles and he is currently working on writing his first monograph. He tweets at @rhyscrilley.

Louise Pears

Louise Pears is a member of the Centre for Global Security Challenges in the Politics and International Studies Department at the University of Leeds. As a feminist researcher her work is concerned with investigating the ‘margins, silences and bottom rungs’ of international security. She has published work on security popular culture and audiences. She is a sporadic Twitter user @louisekpears.