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Social scientists and international relations scholars are increasingly analyzing data collected from Twitter or Facebook to examine political processes in which social media are used. The sheer amount of web 2.0 data and its heterogeneity (including text, photos, and videos), however, pose challenges which analysts frequently seek to overcome through a mixed method approach relying on both quantitative and qualitative methods. This article discusses the advantages and limits of using mixed methods for analyzing social media. We show how the shortcomings of quantitative methods such as sentiment analysis and data mining can be remediated by qualitative content methods in a study of the Twitter activity of private military and security companies (PMSCs).

Private military and security companies (PMSCs) have an image problem. They are frequently called 'mercenaries' or 'dogs of war', due to recurring scandals involving some of these companies, such as human rights violations, fraud and waste. Scholars have analysed the strategies that PMSCs use to distance themselves from such negative labels and to boost their image by studying the companies' websites and advertisements. What is missing so far, however, is an analysis of how PMSCs use social media networking sites in order to present themselves in a positive light. In this article, the authors contribute to filling this gap. Based on assumptions generated with the help of literature on PMSCs, on the one hand, and on business communication and social media, on the other, they analysed the Twitter accounts of 58 PMSCs by using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Their findings suggest that PMSCs use Twitter similar to more generic companies: (1) to promote their own services and products, and (2) to monitor what others say about them. However, Twitter also serves a further purpose for PMSCs not acknowledged thus far. It helps to distract from what these companies are actually doing. Rather than engaging in more or less similar strategies as the literature on corporations' social media use conveys, the functions of different platforms appear to vary across industries. In the case of PMSCs, their particular use of Twitter can be attributed to the sensitive nature of the security services they provide.

Private military and security companies (PMSCs) play an increasingly important role in the provision of security-related services. In their attempts to win new clients and find suitable personnel, they take on different identities by presenting themselves as conventional businesses, military actors, and humanitarians. In this article, we examine how PMSCs deploy these identities when they recruit new personnel through social media. Our computer-assisted content analysis of Twitter messages posted by two major United States-based companies—CACI and DynCorp International—shows that while both PMSCs amplify their business and military identities to attract the most talented personnel, they construct and communicate these identities in different ways with CACI branding itself as a sophisticated, modern, and patriotic business and DynCorp as a home-grown, traditional military provider. In addition, our analysis lends force to scholars suggesting that state militaries and the private security sector compete increasingly for prospective employees using similar strategies. © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.