Search results for “daniel bennett”
Michael Yon: Ministry of Defence gave me “zero warning”
In an email I received overnight, Michael Yon claims the Ministry of Defence "cut off" his embed with the British Army in Afghanistan with "zero warning and no chance for me to prepare." As I highlighted yesterday, Yon had been embedded with 2 Rifles for the last five weeks. The MoD denied that Yon’s embed […]
“Go tell the world about our fake election”
So it finally happened. The election that we’ve been waiting for and looking forward to at least since last winter took place today all over the country. I’ll refrain from writing anything about the rest of the country. There are plenty of places to get a good sense of what happened. Make sure to check […]
IDF Twitter feed breaks 179 day silence
Rather intriguingly the Twitter feed for the Israeli Defence Force, @IDFSpokesperson, has offered the world a tweet for the first time in 179 days. Clearly IDF Spokesperson was getting back into the swing of things because the first one was quickly followed by a second at around 6pm Israeli time: "IDFSpokesperson 106 aid trucks and […]
MoD (sort of) “encourages” use of Twitter, blogs, Facebook
The Ministry of Defence has issued a new set of social media guidelines "encouraging" their personnel to "talk about what they do, but within certain limits to protect security, reputation and privacy". In a notable development the policy allows soldiers to dicuss "their work online without prior authorisation from their chain of command" as long […]
Blogging NATO Sec General calls for openness
NATO’s new Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has used a video blog to call for NATO to be "as open and transparent as possible". Fogh Rasmussen, who took up his post on Saturday and has been outlining NATO’s strategic priorities today, said he wants to use the blog "to have a discussion" about the security […]
US Army uses wikis to update field manuals
The Small Wars Journal informs us that the US Army is converting the contents of their field manuals into wiki format allowing soldiers to update military doctrine. (It’s wikipedia for the Army.) Lt Gen William Caldwell, a leader in the use of social media in the US military, writes: "By converting manuals into wikis, the […]
Strategic Communications: New Media
Here in the bunker – it is a rather swish conference room but there’s a serious shortage of natural light – we’ve been looking at new media and strategic communications. In a moment, three themes from the session and the morning’s discussion. But if you want a frankly more interesting general overview of what the […]
Strategic Communications: Day 2
If you were following the blog yesterday I decided to enjoy the sunshine… Here’s a photo of Alastair Campbell addressing the conference yesterday. After a question and answer session with Campbell on various topics including Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan, we moved onto a panel discussion on how to make a communications strategy work in places […]
Rumours are not confined to Twitter
The Washington Post appears to have inaccurately reported that "the Twitter interface does not support the use of Farsi". The ‘fact’ that Twitter didn’t support Farsi was news to me because I have been watching tweets come into my Twitter feed in Farsi. (Fairly useless from my point of view because I can’t read them, […]
Iran and those elections – Live tonight
We’re discussing the aftermath of the June 12 presidential elections in Iran tonight. We start at 7pm GMT/11am PST and as usual, if you can’t make it to the Club in person, do please join us online in what should be a fantastic debate. We’ll be streaming the event on the Frontline Club broadcast channel, […]
Iran Election: links on media coverage 2
The same deal as yesterday but today instead: Al Jazeera English Journalist uses Twitter to get commentary on Iran. BBC Changing the website to green was NOT a gesture of support to the protesters. Director of Global News says UGC offers authenticity to BBC coverage. Have Your Say team interact with Twitterer. Jon […]
MoD and digital media: “We haven’t gripped it, but we’re getting there”
"I could not write about the past week without mentioning the tragic death of Rifleman Adrian Sheldon. Shelly was a much loved member of the Fire Support Platoon here at FOB [Forward Operating Base] Inkerman and his loss has been extremely hard to come to terms with." In among the stories about political meltdown you […]
WRL: Twitter and the Global Media Forum
A few war reporting links to keep you moderately entertained while I put together a hopefully more enlightening post. (I was hoping to have it for today, but there’s been a slight delay.) 1. Hello, Twitter: Goodbye, McKiernan. The US military has launched an Afghanistan Twitter feed. Just recently the feed has been providing updates […]
Mapping conflict
Using Google Earth (or Maps) as a news tool isn’t exactly new. But mapping all the coalition casualties during the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq is a monumental effort. It’s the work of Sean Askay, a Google employee. He used the company’s 20% programme (allowing employees to spend one day a week on their […]
Media140: Tweeting from the field
Media140 brought together twitterers (and maybe some people who aren’t on Twitter) to talk about the impact of everyone’s favourite 140 character tool on news journalism. Using Twitter to do journalism We learnt what most people know if they’ve been using Twitter to do any sort of journalism. Twitter is pretty darn useful for monitoring […]
Frontline bloggers at Media140
Tomorrow, I’ll be heading along to Media140. It’s a conference that will look at the impact of Twitter and other social media tools on news coverage and journalistic practice. I seem to be pretty interested in this sort of stuff. After all, I’ve written a few things on Twitter – its use as a reporting […]
ISAF launches Twitter feed
Earlier today, I was alerted to the ISAFmedia Twitter feed by my Frontline colleague, Alex Strick van Linschoten. I contacted ISAF, (NATO’s multinational International Security Assistance Force fighting in Afghanistan) and they confirmed that the Twitter feed is an official ISAF operation. A spokesperson said the project "is in its infancy", but ISAF hope to […]
Blog reaction to a new commander in Afghanistan
Lt-General Stanley McChrystal (right) addresses a press briefing on Iraq in 2003. Now he’s in charge of US forces in Afghanistan. (Defenselink.mil) Bill and Bob "Based on Gates’ announcement, it appears that it is a signal that field commanders will be held accountable for the lack of progress in their areas. Gates spoke […]
More on the role of social media in Moldova
A few weeks ago, I was part of an interesting debate about the role of Twitter in a protest against the Communist Party’s election in Moldova. I’d like to say that I think it has been a valuable exchange of ideas conducted in excellent order. I particularly want to thank all the people who commented […]
The evolution of military blogging in the mediasphere
A couple of weeks ago I was at the military blogging conference in Washington DC. (I decided to use the opportunity to spend some time travelling in Virginia and then I was straight onto a new media conference in Athens, so I’m way behind with the blogging.) It was really interesting to meet the milbloggers […]
Milblogging Conference 2009
If all goes according to plan, I will be at the Milblogging Conference in Washington D.C. this Friday and Saturday. I’m really looking forward to meeting some of the bloggers behind the milblogs and hearing what they have to say about a variety of topics. I’d like to do a few short interviews with some […]
Citizen media and the Tbilisi protests
We’ve heard a lot about the use of social networking sites and services such as Twitter and Facebook by political activists in the past week, but opposition protests in Georgia have also shown that they are valuable tools in the hands of student and professional journalists alike. As an editor for Global Voices Online, a site which […]
Citizen media and the Tbilisi protests
We’ve heard a lot about the use of social networking sites and services such as Twitter and Facebook by political activists in the past week, but opposition protests in Georgia have also shown that they are valuable tools in the hands of student and professional journalists alike. As an editor for Global Voices Online, a site which […]
The myth of the Moldova ‘Twitter revolution’
According to the BBC thousands of protesters descended on Moldova’s parliament building yesterday to demonstrate against the Communist Party’s victory in last Sunday’s elections. The protesters are thought to be primarily made up of students and young people who claim the results of the election were fradulent despite being approved by election monitors. Twitter Unsurprisingly […]
Blogging military blogging
I came across a blog called Soldiers in the blogosphere recently. It’s run by an active duty US Army Major, Jakob Bruhl, and is part of his graduation requirement from the Air Command and Staff College. Maj Bruhl discusses whether soldiers should be encouraged to write blogs and over the last few weeks he has […]
Ministry of Defence blog rumbling forward
The Ministry of Defence has been rather slow on the uptake in the social media world. Partly because they’ve just been slow – it happens in large bureaucratic organisations and partly because there are a lot of difficulties working out how best to play the communication game when lives are at stake and sensitive issues […]
(Not) contacting the IDF through social media
In my post about the Israeli Defence Force and their use of social media during the Gaza conflict, I said I was trying to chase up the IDF for a comment or response to it. I, for one, would be interested to hear their take on it. Several emails have met with no response, so […]
Digital War Reporting
Just flagging up a book to watch out for later this year. Digital War Reporting is being written by Stuart Allan and Donald Matheson, two authors I’ve already cited on numerous occasions in my PhD. In the book they explore ‘how new technologies open up innovative ways for journalists to convey the horrors of warfare […]
How the IDF fell off the social media bandwagon
I’ve been thinking for a while about how the Israeli Defence Force used social media during the conflict in Gaza and I’m not at all convinced the campaign was successful. Yes, the IDF was right to engage with the Internet and social media. But the way they went about it was questionable. I have two […]
Mumbai ‘mesmerised’ the world’s media
Pretty obvious I suppose but there are some interesting bits and pieces in this RAND report into the terrorist attacks on Mumbai back in November 2008. Most of it concerns the implications for security strategy but there’s a few observations about media coverage and its relationship with terrorism. 1. The nature of the media […]