This concentration is meant to teach the student how social influence and persuasion works, specifically focusing on different aspects of information warfare and data collection.
The concentration teaches how strategic adversaries have targeted propaganda campaigns against the United States as well as cross-cultural comparisons. When possible, the courses will also focus on case-studies of US adversaries to understand strategic comparative advantage concerning social influence campaigns.
This concentration is interdisciplinary and collaborative in nature, teaching the social science of influence campaigns combined with modules on communication, history, intelligence studies, and socio-psychological aspects of group behavior and decision-making. The concentration is aimed at understanding the human element of cyber-operations involving social influence including social media warfare.
Dr. Craig Albert- Program Director
Summerville Campus
1120 15th St, AH-N309
Augusta, GA 30912
Social influence is one of the most important forms of information operations (IO) and is routinely deployed within great power politics, both as a force multiplier, and as a great balancer between nation-states with discrepancies in their national power indices. In this program students will be able to expand their knowledge base on important aspects such as how information warfare and propaganda integrate with intelligence, how online deception and social influence work among many other objectives.
PADM 6351: Introduction to Homeland Security
SECR 6411: Introduction to Intelligence Studies
SECR 6600: Research and Analysis Methods for Intelligence and Security Studies
SECR 6906: Terrorism Studies
SECR 6911: Introduction to Security Studies
SECR 6916: The Causes and Prevention of War
SECR 6168: Cross-Cultural Security and Psychology
SECR 6413: Open Source Intelligence Collection
SECR 6920: Weaponizing Information: The History and Theory of Propaganda
SECR 6982: Information Warfare
SECR 6998: Thesis I or SECR 6997 Capstone
SECR 6999: Thesis II or SECR 6997
or
SECR 6809: Ethnic Conflict
SECR 6919: Psychology of Terrorism
There are a variety of employment opportunities in the profession of Intelligence and Security Studies. Having a dedicated concentration in social influence will greatly amplify the job prospects of our graduating students in the areas:
Augusta University faculty, staff and students joined government, military, academic and industry leaders at TechNet Augusta 2026, one of the nation's premier defense technology conferences.
Nearly 1,800 military-connected students are part of the Augusta University community, including 870 who use military education benefits.
Throughout his life Ray Whiting, PhD, has been a lawyer, professor, mediator, author, special assistant and, most recently, an ordained minister.
Lance Hunter, PhD, says data centers currently use an estimated 1% to 2% of power worldwide, and those energy demands could grow 160% by 2030.