Anyone still doubting the power of social media? Again it has been a wicked year for social media, as its instrumental for groups in getting their messages accross. Time Magazine’s person of the year uses it, governments use it to oppress the protesters, other governments attack those oppressing governments.
And, Time wisely remarkes: no big political or activist institutions where necessary to start the demonstrations. All bottum up! and mostly with the help of social media.
Like i wrote earlier,like in this post: social media changes the media landscape. As a government, company or institution you have to be there and be active in order to maintain some kind of influence. If not, you perish. Or, as Eisenhower put it in 1954: your the next in the row of dominos. Powerhierarchies are no longer vertical, they are rapidly becoming horizontal.
So, aspiring revolutionaries, oppressive governments, oppositionparties, organisations of all kinds: Read Time, and learn. then read this blog, and learn, then get out there and go and use the Force!
(but for anyone losing power because of social media: weeping in a corner first is okay, i wont tell anyone)
Since the media attention from Kunduz is a bit fragmented the defence websites are about the only place to get a decent, yet very onsided, picture of the situation ‘over there’. These images and stories are nothing short of SHOUTING the official version of the story ‘policemission, policemission, not military, not fighting, reconstruction ONLY HELPING NOT SHOOTING!’
How about some context online? Thats hard! there are a lot of people shouting all kinds of things about the mission, but real background information is missing.
The best one i found is http://www.trainingsmissie.nl, but its origins are shredded in darkness. Wonder who´s behind this site.
The rest of the dutch non journalism part of the bloggingcommunity is well, a little bit dissapointing. Lots of shouting and fingerpointing to ´those politicians´ and sofort. Check ´em out yourself
Om met de laatste blogpost maar te stoppen, je kunt zo eindeloos doorgaan. Wat opvalt is dat de meeste blogs gaan over de besluitvorming en slechts een deel over de locale situatie. Natuurlijk siert het de bloggers dat zij niet schrijven over waar zij geen verstand van hebben. Maar het kan ook worden gezien als een verwijt dat veel politici krijgen, namelijk dat ze vastzitten in hun eigen kaasstolp en niet over de dijken kijken.
Wie zegt dat het internet van de wereld een dorp maakt, heeft ten dele gelijk. Ik zou zeggen dat het dorpse karakter van Nederland keurig blijft behouden met het genavelstaar op de haagse vierkante centimeter.
And when writing this, i suddenly realize that i wrote that last part was in dutch, yes! really works with the whole context of the post about all the criticism about politicians and choice of words, while Kunduz itself is just an extra in the soap opera around the Dutch policemission there.
So i´ll leave it as it is! I´ll better myself by watching the docu Camp Victory…
Check out this great slideshare about the use of social media around the world. For the military: 19 % talks about the boss/ company online, more are proud of their work! USE THIS POTENTIAL!!!
A great story in the Washington post today that underscores my thesis as written in publications about the way individual soldiers use social media to share their experiences online; selfconscious and conscious of their audience.
In the article ‘Whats it Like’, soldiers are telling that they share only very censored versions of their experiences to the homefront.
The capabilities of soldiers in a warzone to communicate (internet, social media et cetera) have not shrunken the psychological or emotional distance from home that rises from the frontline experience. Near misses, firefights, IED-explosions, all of those ‘frontline experiences’ are more easily shared amongst collegagues who have had similar experiences. the homefront will not understand how it feels to be shot at, or someone trying to blow up your truck.
The soldier understands that, so he tells a different story at home than amongst collegues. He adopts different stories, based on the identity he has -a soldier in a warzone- and based on the audience recieving his story, who does not share that identity. What he shares is based on the set of norms and assumptions that exist within his subculture at that moment. This subculture is the US military in Iraq or Afghanistan. Within that subculture, things like operational security -opsec- and the idea that the homefront doest not fully understand whats it like form the basis of most stories. In short: Soldiers think about their position and their audience before they speak.
Social media may bridge the geographical distance between the front and the homefront, but not the emotional. The soldier realizes that. Opsec and the fear of upsetting the family are amongst the most important issues a soldier thinks about before telling something. So the chances of problems with public opinion or opsec, ‘friendly fire’, are very slim.
From this perspective, letting soldiers tell their stories from the frontline through new communicationtools like social media is not as big risk as it may seem at first glance. Strict regulations are therefore not necessary. Maybe the government can even apply these stories to build a positive framing about the way things are ‘over there’. The soldiers and the military leadership share the same need for a supportive homefront that will not get scared about whats going from the stories by by individual soldiers and the military as a whole about their presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Quick share: The first research results are being published on the use of social media during the #UK riots. One study, published august 16th, i came accross this morning is worth sharing here, since it suggest that the absence of censorship helps control the amount of unrest in the ‘real’ world. It also suggest that the more censorship you impose, the more chance there is for violence. Now thats something different than what prime minister Cameron suggested and what other leaders around the world, even in our country suggest: that more strict rules and control should be imposed to keep things nice and peacefull; or at least that more cooperation with the companies providing those platforms should be undertaken (what this ‘cooperation exactly ammounts to is not really clear, so thats can be a bit of an issue.)
To me, this study is another great argument for allowing the use of social media, ESPECIALLY in times of unrest, or in special situations. Social media is not the same as traditional media, the rules and practices are different, so stop using the old media’s controlmechanisms, studies like these show that those have their downsides as well.
Ok, quick share: America is way ahead in the whole discussion about openess and more freedom online. They have an amazing handbook for the military in which ‘openess’ is a keyphrase.
Well, guess what, papers published by Muckrock suggests that at least part of the US airforce is still blocking quite a lot of websites.Ok, 90 percent is some Wikileaks adaptation (wikileaks.somecountry) which i can imagine not being in the Armies top five best friends on facebook, but also The Guardian,TheNew York times, Spiegel and some other pretty mainstream sites.
Whats that about? Mad that they worked with wikileaks? I wonder if there will be any type of row will get out of this thing.
My quick first thought is that this descision by a specific branch of the military is that this is exactly the kind of double agenda you get when you let lower commanders decide what to do with internet and social media without very clear guidelines what is and what is not allowed online. Keeping the rules vague means shifting responsibility to the lower echolons. They dont want to miss promotion or something, so the censor themselves out of fear the do something wrong unintended. Maybe this type of censorship is even more effective than just forbidding everything. and maybe that is whats happening here: blocking wikileaks is logical, but lets block all those other people trying to feed of the information from Wikileaks as well.. darn Journalists, here take that!
Just a thought, maybe there is some other logical explanation for this, i’m curious.
The entire list and the correspondence about this list is found here
It looks like their is another source of information popping up from Syria; the soldiers doing the dirty work are filming their actions. These video’s are becoming a new kind of bounty. In Lybia they stole someones smartphone? as a trophy, here they show off their deeds online. I wonder if these folks understand what the potential spread of these video’s is. What do they want to share with us, the viewer? Is it really a trophy, like the people in Lybia taking dead fighters phones? Is it a ‘ look mom, i can shoot my gun and beat prisoners’ kind of video, is it something to share amongst friends, is it ment for the family archive? These intentions are important if we want to understand the story the soldiers are sharing. Maybe they dont know themselves and they just do it because they can.
I like big buts though: in Syria’s almost lighttight censorshiprule you have to be carefull in jumping to conclusions about leaking videos that where not ment to be online. Maybe they áre ment to be online and that mr.Assad is taking the online battle for the framing of the Syrian showdown to the next level, not only beating the protesters on facebook (bit of an old link, still actual), but also increasingly countering their shaky video’s on youtube.
Syria knows its social media, so be carefull when ananlysing these vid’s.
I write and think about -in a sometims wild manner, sorry for that- about the possibilities social media has as a new informationchannel from battlefields. Everyone has some kind of mobile device nowadays to share their own story, including soldiers. So, the military leadership of Western countries that are involved in missions get a bit nervous aboute people at home being informed about those missions through those social media sites. Especially when this information is critical in maintaining some kind of public support.
Take Eeve. In its simplest form, Eeve lets users take photos from their mobile and collaboratively tell a story with others in close proximity – these collaborations are what are known as ‘Eeves’.
Military use?
Military personal will shiver at the word ‘Eeve’, or ‘Eeves’, since it reminds you of eevesdropping. Loose Tweets sink fleets ay?
But what about the endless possibilities to build an almost realtime picture of a battlefield through Eeving? Not only helpfull with already existing technology to keep a realtime overview of the battlefield. It can also help countering enemy claims about certain developments, those claims are going at a fast pace as well nowadays, Taliban knows their Twitter as well.
So if you loose the geotagging for a moment (not very handy in realtime, opsec and stuff) you have a great tool to build a quick and total overview of a battlefield in pix. Good for framing if maintained the right way, good for building bridges with the homefront. (quick overview possible, if managed correctly great way of showing what the individual soldier as well as the total unit is doing ‘over there’)
What it shows Ok, its just a wild thought and Eeve is only a startup, and a small one. But it shows the endless possibilities that social media has, and that beyond the now common sites such as Twitter, Facebook and sofort their still is a frontier of unchartered technological terrain waiting to be claimed by some group of smart whizzkids.
For the military it also shows that the military must be constantly aware of anything new on social media, because at the current pace, policies focussing on certaing types of social media are outdated before they hit the stores. It shows that being social media savvy will mean not only keeping updated on developments, but also that you must focus on the use of social media, not on the technology itself. Maybe the social media handbook of the US ARMY has to be even more of a general guideline as it is today and not turn into a big book of how to work with every different type of social media. For the netherlands, which doesnt have such a great handbook yet, something to think about.
Here a quick scan of the twitter/ blog and youtube activity on social media and the Dutch Defence Department i came accross on my daily round of social media today. I am planning to do this on a regular -though not EVERYday- basis. Why? ‘cause i dont have a site that does this for me yet.
This post, and more posts in the future will be used as an extra curationtool for myself, and hopefully some readers, to keep updated on the ongoing discussion on social media within a military organisation. I will keep a special eye on the dutch defence department. But where necessary -necessary defined by me on the basis of what i find interesting 🙂 – i’ll post on social media developments in other countries as well.
Hope u like it!
Today twitters on Dutch Defence
Hans Damen focust on the great way in which the american military is active on social media. Funny that so little people realise the immense gap between the dutch and the american social media approach. Google translate will help the foreign visitors understanding the weird lingo: Its called Dutch.
Overzicht US Army op social media. Chefs #defensie en #landmacht actief op Twitter en Facebook. http://t.co/r3XUqBk
Another post is on the upcoming reorganisation in the dutch military, it got a whopping three RT’s, as far as i found. For 1000 new servicemembers not a very effective use of Twitter.
Defensie zoekt ruim 1.000 nieuwe militaire werknemers voor een baan in 2012.
RT @MennoLittel: Servicepunt #Defensie heeft twitter! RT @ServiceDefensie: Defensie zoekt ruim 1.000 nieuwe militaire werknemers voor een baan in 2012.
No video’s uploaded this week on youtube listening to calls with keywords: Soldiers Afghanistan, Soldier Afghanistan, Kunduz Afghanistan,
Checking last months uploads i found some the following links -used only the six results that i found relevant. It involves both vernacular stories uploaded by soldiers and official video’s: you check out the differences. I know Iraq is also still happening, but no Dutch there, so focussing on Afghanistan.
I take no credit for this video, original upload by YouTube user ‘army18x’ Footage shot in Tangi Valley, Wardak Province Afghanistan ~2011. TAGS: US Army in iraq attacks insurgent positions apache attack helicopter gunship gun run afghanistan iraq ta…
The trade routes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border is key to jump starting the Afghan economy. Air Force Staff Sgt. Chad Usher was at the border and shows us how a joint team is helping to keep the commerce moving. Includes sound bites from Maj. …
This edition features a story about how the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, or Ramazan as its known in Afghanistan, emphasizes different lessons, including charity to those less fortunate. Sometimes charity means more than just giving money. Soundbite …
This edition features stories on one C-12 pilot’s last flight as a member of the military, how the Combined Security Forces lead their own presence patrols in Kirkuk, and what two Soldiers, stationed at Contingency Operating Base Speicher, do in supp…
Soldiers with Delta Company 126 patrol the outlying area of Combat Outpost Narizah on a regular basis. Marine Sgt. Todd Crowell went out with the Soldiers to find out what their daily job was all about. Provided by American Forces Network Afghanistan…
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