If Social Knowledge is the use of social media to create, transfer, and preserve organizational knowledge – past, present, and future – with a view to achieving the organizational vision; it can be can argued that the military is undergoing a transformation with respect to its approach to this new battlefront and what vision it wants to create.
In the early days of social media the military treated it, as it does with all unknowns, solely as a threat. There were, and to a large degree still exist, serious concerns around social media sites and operational security (OPSEC). Fears were rampant that social media had the potential to put sensitive information into the wrong hands.
In February of 2008 the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) reported on the Canadian Forces attempts to ban use, by members, of social media sites such as Facebook citing concerns around OPSEC. They reported on a memo issued by DND to warn members of the dangers: