Framework for Military Applications of Social Media

This article draws on empirical data with British military personnel in order to investigate what we call the digital mundane in military life. We argue that social media and smartphone technologies within the military offer a unique environment in which to investigate the ways individuals position themselves within certain axes of institutional and cultural identities. At the same time, the convolutions, mediatory practices and mundane social media rituals that service personnel employ through their smartphones resonate widely with, for example, youth culture and digital mobile cultures. Together, they suggest complex mediations with social and mobile media that draw on and extend non-military practice into new (and increasingly normative) terrains.

2013

Israel gained widespread attention for its use of social media during Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012. This episode demonstrates Israel's emphasis on strategic communication and social media. Despite multiple recommendations for change, the US military seems to be far behind Israel in adapting to the new media environment. Doctrinal change creates operational uncertainty, which is why most militaries resist innovation unless they are forced to by military failure or civilian intervention. In the US, these factors are absent, which indicates that the US is unlikely to change its approach to social media.

38th International Business Information Management Association Conference (IBIMA)

Although somewhat unwillingly, practically all armies in the world use social media to (1) promote military service and recruitment, (2) establish the reputation and positive image of the organisation, and (3) maintain their relationship with already recruited, former or prospective soldiers. This article constitutes a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the use of social media by the Territorial Defence Forces in Poland in 2017-2019, i.e. for the purpose of creating a positive image of the newly-founded formation and maintaining relationships with their supporters and prospective recruits. The research conducted demonstrates (1) the consistency, attractiveness and coherence of communications which meet the criteria of communication via social media platforms, (2) the effectiveness of the implemented communication strategy resulting in an increase of the number of users and their activity and (3) the development of good practices adopted by other branches of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland.

2012

Our research is aimed at investigating whether social media has a role to play in military Command & Control. Since social media is peer-to-peer, it could facilitate Network-Enabled Capabilities. A useful theoretical development is Reuter, Marx, and Pipek’s (2011) proposal of a two-by-two matrix for social software infrastructure. Their framework assumes one-way communication and monolithic organizations. However, to operate in a real-time, dynamic environment, crisis management organizations must close the decision-making loop. Moreover, they must be structured into an action part that handles the crisis on-site, and a control part that monitors and directs operations in real time. The purpose of this work-in-progress paper is to present our extension of Reuter et al’s framework. The paper outlines Reuter et al’s framework, summarises the basic theory of Command & Control, describes how we extended Reuter et al’s framework, and outlines further research.

The US Department of Defense uses new media “social media” tools and products to support missions around the world. Some of those missions use social media to support humanitarian assistance operations for responding to a crisis or disaster. Other missions include planning and using social media to support combat operations.

2010

is a Directing Staff at DSSC, Wellington. "No man is an island" said John Donne, i.e. human beings do not thrive when isolated from others. Donne was a Christian but this concept is shared by other religions, principally Buddhism. 1 Homo sapiens are social animals and isolation or seclusion generally sends shivers down their spines. Mandela and Syu Ki are revered as they could withstand this ordeal during their prolonged incarceration. Social networking is, thus, an emotional and psychological need. Since times immemorial men have sought ways and means of socialising, and the elaborate means of communication available today are precisely to fulfil that need. The media, of course, kept evolving from speech to voice transmission to present day live video streaming and who knows tele-transporting would cease to be in the realms of sci-fi in the days to come. With the advent of internet, networking at organisational level was achieved, but it took Mr Sabir Bhatia to conjure up the hotmail and soon the flood gates had opened. Today there is a plethora of social networking sites available and more often than not, the geeks are hopping from one to the other in a flash, i.e. from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to Orkut or YouTube, MySpace and many more, these sites are commonly referred to as Web 2.0. All of these appear in a ranking of the world's most popular networks by total monthly web visits, which also includes Orkut, a Google owned service that is heavily used in India and Brazil, and QQ, which is big in China. On top of these, there are other big national community sites such as Skyrock in France, VKontakte in Russia, and Cyworld in South Korea, as well as numerous smaller social networks that appeal to specific interests such as Muxlim, aimed at the world's Muslims, and ResearchGATE, which connects scientists and researchers; they obviously have only disdain for the snail mail types. 2 The social networking sites can be exploited by the cyber operators by infiltration and influencing the opinion where feasible. Cyber espionage has already became the cornerstone of some nations, where international cyber security agencies have reasons to believe, of state complicity in major hacking, denial of service attacks in the last couple of years. Since social networks become easy prey to such agencies, there is a need to increase awareness of defence personal about their vulnerabilities.

New media includes all those platforms that empower a broad range of actors (individuals through nation--states) to create and disseminate near--real time or real time information with the ability to affect a broad (regional or worldwide) audience. i The present scenario has brought a bigger challenge before the defence organisations in terms of handling new media technologies, in

2011

Abstract: US service members are increasingly jeopardized by information posted on social network websites. While some of the most damaging information comes from spouses and other non-official sources, other information comes from the use of social media by the DoD because non-public, secure channels for questions and feedback do not exist.

Journal of Information Warfare, 2017

Modern military operations continue to be extraordinarily susceptible to the effects of cyber-based Information Operations (IO). Within social media lies the ability to gain a clearer perspective of the 21st-century battlefields, enabling rapid and informed decision making and decisive action by commanders and their staffs. This paper discusses emerging trends, threats, and concepts that are being employed by numerous actors around the globe to gain positional advantage both internal and external to the cyberspace domain.