A Comprehensive Review of NLP Techniques for Military Terminologies and Information Operations on Social Media

Tamara Kokenovna Zhukabayeva, Zulfiqar Ahmad, Aigerim Yerimbetova, Madina Sambetbayeva, Duman Telman, Bayangali Abdygalym, Elmira Daiyrbayeva

IEEE Access, 2025

Full text Open access: Gold Metadata (CSL-JSON)
DOI 10.1109/access.2025.3605354
Data confidence 70 medium
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Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive study aimed at systematically analyzing and evaluating natural language processing (NLP) techniques for military information operations, with a special focus on social media intelligence. Among an ever-growing complicated information environment, NLP methods like sentiment analysis, named entity recognition, and topic modeling have been essential in tracking online propaganda efforts, discovering emerging issues and threats globally with dialogues on military operations. These techniques make an impact on available decision making via situational awareness and getting the added extraction from volumes of unstructured data outputs thus increasing the overall strategic benefits to military organizations. There are technical and operational challenges concerning the use of NLP in a military context such as requirements for real-time data processing; language diversity; and maintaining data privacy while preserving ethical standards. To address these challenges, the study conducts an exhaustive survey of NLP methods, reviewing their range of applications, and highlights the relevance of several approaches for military information operations, with special emphasis on social media intelligence. The work further provides discussion on the comprehensive adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), edge computing, and multilingual NLP models for enhancing adaptability, efficiency, and transparency of the systems. It also extols the need for explainable AI (XAI) to improve accountability and trust by making term or even whole early warning systems derived from NLP analyses, transparent and interpretable for these military research applications with significant financial consequences. The paper also emphasizes the strategic importance of multilingual and multimodal analysis and the integration of specialized military lexicons to improve the contextual understanding of military discourse in social media environments. We also elucidate the important capabilities of NLP in enabling military operations to be responsive, rapid and data-driven while also adapting to the evolving nature of warfare. Key conclusions suggest that applying advanced NLP tools enhances situational awareness, enables timely threat detection, and supports more agile, data-informed decision-making within modern military operations. The paper shows a perspective to optimize NLP and AI technologies, leveraging various perspectives to benefit the operational needs of military and defense sectors in more data-rich environments.