The U.S. military plan to analyse 350 billion public social media posts in their continued effort to study how popular movements evolve. The study which will look at posts, comments, metadata, and location identifiers of around 200 million people over a 100 countries will be the most ambitious of its kind.

The study will be conducted out of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and seeks to discover what mobilises people.

William A. Carter, deputy director for tech policy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, said the study is important to help defend against adversaries who seek to undermine democracy and create divisions in western society: “We need to better understand how narratives are shaped and communities are formed online to defend ourselves against these campaigns,” he said.

Read More: Yahoo