Search results for “daniel bennett”
Exploring the role of Twitter and social media in revolutions
I’m afraid I haven’t been able to follow events in Tunisia and Egypt as closely as I would have liked as I was determined to enjoy an overdue holiday and a break from computer screens. And my mission was largely accomplished. As part of an attempt to catch up, I’ve just been reading Jeff Jarvis, […]
Covering the Marines on Facebook: embedded journalism goes open source
Teru Kuwayama is embedded with the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan, but he’s not there with a traditional media organisation. He and a team of photographers are using funds from a Knight Foundation grant as part of an experimental project covering 1/8 battalion’s deployment in Helmand province. The team’s photographs and material relating to the deployment […]
Wikileaks and the embassy cables: media coverage
I’m afraid I might not be able to look at the latest Wikileaks release of U.S. embassy cables in too much detail as I’m scrambling to finish up my PhD thesis. If, for some reason, you want my thoughts on Wikileaks I wrote a couple of blog posts on the organisation last month – ‘Some […]
Wikileaks: cat among pigeons
Download this episode View in iTunes Watch the associated event here. A couple of days ago, I finished a post on Wikileaks by stating that the media organisation that refuses to play by everybody else’s rules is still learning its own game. I promised you more on that and here it is. One of […]
Embedded in Afghanistan: “All you can do is give a snapshot”
Embedded journalism in Afghanistan is on the agenda at the Frontline Club this evening. Several journalists are on the panel including Caroline Wyatt, (BBC), Tim Marshall, (Sky News) and the Club’s founder Vaughan Smith. While they’ll be discussing Afghanistan and embedding tonight, The Independent‘s Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent, Kim Sengupta, will be heading back to […]
Footage from Pakistan plane crash site posted to YouTube
Earlier today a plane crashed in Pakistan killing all 152 people that were on board. The Airblue aircraft came down in hills north of the capital, Islamabad. Footage from the scene of the aftermath was posted to YouTube and highlighted by the CitizenTube blog. In June, CitizenTube said it would increase its focus on finding […]
Do images of the aftermath of an attack help insurgents?
Earlier today I came across an interesting blog post by Holly Pickett who recently finished her seven week rotation as the New York Times bureau photographer in Baghdad. She says: "It is nearly impossible to photograph the aftermath of a car bomb or street battle. In most cases, the scene is blocked by police, and cameras […]
The blog as a weapon in an era of information war
I’ve been doing some research into the coverage of the Gaza conflict (back end of 2008, front end of 2009) on blogs. One of the English-language blogs that covered the war was the Muqata blog. The Muqata blog was started in 2005 by ‘Jameel’, a Jewish settler who had lived in Chomesh in Gaza before […]
Admiral Mullen’s social media strategy
The Public Affairs Office looking after Admiral Mullen has revealed his social media strategy for 2010 by sticking it up on Slideshare. Admiral Mullen is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for US forces and admitted a while ago that his wife reminded him to use his Twitter account. Some interesting bits […]
Military bloggers turn on Michael Yon after comments about McChrystal
A while ago now I wrote about Michael Yon and the end of his embed with the British Army in Afghanistan. Well it seems the lightning has struck again – only this time much harder. Another Yon embed came to what he regarded as a premature end earlier in the month, but this time rather […]
The Liberal Democrats: Strident change or Trident tweaking?
So the Liberal Democrats want to scrap, replace, consider replacing…hang on a minute, let’s find the manifesto…"commit not to replace the Trident nuclear weapons system on a like-for-like basis" if they are voted into office. And I would be very surprised if the Trident issue fails to make an appearance in tonight’s leaders’ debate. After […]
Embedded journalism in Afghanistan
Yesterday, I travelled up to Coventry for a conversation about embedded journalism in Afghanistan. It was hosted by Coventry University and the BBC’s College of Journalism. I’m not sure I ever really understood the question that was supposed to frame this debate: "Afghanistan: Are we embedding the truth?" (Answers on a postcard etc…) But as […]
Round up: Marjah; war reporting; Facebook and the IDF.
Fighting the Taliban in Marjah, Afghanistan. There was an interesting little sub-plot in this article in The Times about the aim of protecting and winning over the population in a counterinsurgency operation. On the one hand these US Marines were being asked to exercise some level of restraint: "The new rules of engagement, dubbed “Courageous […]
Michael Yon to embed with the Gurkhas later in the year?
Independent journalist Michael Yon, whose vivid dispatches from Frontline military embeds have proved popular both in the United States and Britain, has said that a return to covering British forces in Afghanistan later in the year is a strong possibility. A few weeks ago, on his Facebook fan page (one of those new news sources […]
Afghanistan: “A solution is going to look somewhat ugly”
The important international voices have been ‘on message’ about Afghanistan recently in time for a new British-led NATO offensive in the area around Marjah in Helmand province. At the London Conference last month there was talk of "turning the tide"; NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen believes there is new momentum in Afghanistan; and US […]
Counterinsurgency blogged: A 30-day tour of Afghanistan
This looks like an interesting new blog which apparently kicks off today. US Tech Sergeants Ken Raimondi and Nathan Gallaghan are going to travel through five regional commands in Afghanistan blogging and vlogging along the way. Unsurprisingly, they think the story of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan isn’t being covered by the media: "We want to show […]
The future begins with ‘C’
Ok, here at Frontline we don’t know exactly what will happen in the unpredictable worlds of journalism and warfare over the coming years. But we can reveal how everyone will be describing the future. Military and media experts have gazed into their respective crystal balls (or maybe they’re sharing the same one due to respective […]
Rupert Hamer ‘died for the truth’
The Telegraph’s defence correspondent, Sean Rayment, pays tribute to his Sunday Mirror colleague, Rupert Hamer, who became the first British journalist to be killed in Afghanistan earlier this month. "Rupert and I had many conversations about whether reporting from Afghanistan was worth the risk, especially for those of us who had families. But Rupert was […]
Frontline Club: blogging and social media training
Cross-posted from my now rather inaccurately named Mediating Conflict blog, this is just a note to let you know that I’ll be running the Frontline Club’s blogging and social media training course on 1 and 2 February 2010. Hopefully it will be great fun and a really good way to get yourself started in online […]
24/7 media world undermines use of force, says UK Minister
The Armed Forces Minister, Bill Rammell, delivered a speech yesterday in which he expressed his concern that the information age had fundamentally altered the conditions in which Britain could "project power" in the world. Talking at the Institute of Public Policy Research, Rammell noted that there were many positive benefits from the development of "access […]
Defence correspondent Rupert Hamer killed in Afghanistan
The Sunday Mirror’s defence correspondent, Rupert Hamer, has been killed in Afghanistan while embedded with US Marines. Photographer Phil Coburn also suffered serious leg injuries when the MRAP vehicle they were travelling in was hit by an Improvised Explosive Device on Saturday. One US Marine was killed and five others were injured in the attack […]
US Army blog reaches out to milbloggers
A post has been written on the official US Army blog in an attempt to appease disaffected US military bloggers who held a silent protest last Wednesday. Public Affairs Specialist, Lindy Kyzer, concurs with a number of concerns raised by military bloggers admitting that there are "still areas, and leaders, where blogging in the ranks […]
US military bloggers fall silent in protest
A couple of days ago a number of military bloggers in the US agreed to hold a silent day of protest and more bloggers appear to be joining the campaign. The trigger for the blogging strike was the treatment of blogger CJ Grisham whose chain of command became involved in his row with a local […]
Twitter and the Iraq Inquiry
The other day, Dave Lee pointed out that Sky were doing something interesting with a Twitter feed during their coverage of the Iraq Inquiry. They were showing foreign correspondent Tim Marshall’s Twitter feed alongside the live coverage of the Inquiry. At this particular point in time, Sir John Scarlett was being asked about the intelligence […]
Stephen Grey: Afghanistan is “quite depressing”
Journalist Stephen Grey has recently returned from Helmand province and described his trip to Afghanistan as "quite depressing". He noted that casualties have increased in 2009 and said it has already been a hard winter for troops on the ground. Grey was talking to the War Studies Department at King’s College London yesterday about his […]
IDF soldier blogs from the front line
A blogging American-Israeli combat soldier has been deployed to the West Bank. According to his blog, 25 year old Danny Brothers has finished his training with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and is serving in "al-Madina al-Muqaddasah" – a pseudonym for the city where he is stationed. In recent posts, Brothers describes his first foot […]
Frontline: Obama’s War
I flagged up the preview earlier in the month and now here is the full version of the Frontline documentary, Obama’s War:
MoD apologises to Michael Yon for “misunderstanding”
Yesterday, I suggested there might be an unlikely rapprochement between Michael Yon and the British Ministry of Defence after the row over the end of the journalist’s embed with the British Army in Afghanistan. And that’s clearly what Nick Gurr, the MoD’s Director of Media and Communications, is trying to achieve with this post. Written […]
More on Michael Yon and British Media Operations
Apologies to those of you who are already in October but I’ve been on holiday and want to wrap a few things up from the back end of September. This is one of those things. So if you read about this last week there’s not much new here. But if you haven’t, hopefully it offers […]
Michael Yon to end Afghanistan embeds and go it alone
Independent war reporter Michael Yon has not so much burnt his military embed bridges as completely obliterated them. He claims that the Ministry of Defence has been trying to have him removed from the area of Regional Command (South) and from Thursday he will be reporting unilaterally from Helmand province. Yon was annoyed that his […]