Audiences

GlobalSecurity.org caters to a large and targeted audience. We write specifically for news organizations, having a close working relationship with many reporters covering our issue areas. We understand that our enthusiastic audience also includes current, former and prospective military service members, defense contractor folks, family members of people deployed to Iraq. We hear that congressional staff covering defense issues are among our users, along with intelligence community staff, and other government officials. Others who make frequent use of the website include academics, students and the interested public at large.

We have identified several key target audiences for our online presence, and tailored our implementation to meet their needs:

Subject Matter Experts who specialize more or less full time in particular topics need quick and ready access to primary documentation, such as news briefing transcripts, Congressional hearing testimony and contract announcements, as well as news reports not readily available in the mass media. By making our own research archives available online to the entire community, we free other experts from the time consuming chores of document collection, and free them to concentrate on analysis and commentary.

Senior Leaders are frequently called upon to comment on specific questions which are outside their immediate area of interest, and thus need point papers, fact sheets and briefing books to quickly bring them back up to speed on the immediate question at hand. We provide a broad range of such summary information products, which are enhanced relative to hardcopy material both by their ready availability, as well as their linkage to more in-depth background material if needed.

Junior Staff and Interns must quickly familiarize themselves with the often bewildering array of programs, acronyms, agencies and other cats and dogs that are the fundamental building-blocks of national decision-making. Our online resources provide both the initial orientation needed to get started, as well as links to more sophisticated resources to promote continued professional development.

Concerned Citizens have diverse needs that complement and span the range from subject matter experts to senior leaders and junior staff. Some activists have long-standing, highly developed and focused interests that rival those of full time professional experts, and our online presence provides a vehicle both to service these needs and bring together otherwise isolated experts and citizens. Others have much more immediate needs for basic information to respond to local public or media interest, and our briefing materials respond to these needs as well.

News Reporters are our most important online target audience, as we have found the internet to be an unusually powerful tool in our media outreach efforts. With all reporters now having online access, we are finding that most of our media contacts are either initiated as a result of a journalist accessing our site, or conclude with our directing the journalist to additional background information available online.