From Cast Lead to Pillar of Defense: How the IDF has learnt to communicate war in Gaza online

In 2009, I wrote a blog post arguing that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had "fallen off the social media bandwagon". Their digital media campaign in support of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza was hastily conceived, unimaginative and anti-social.

New tools were used to disseminate traditional military messages with little regard for a new online culture of communication.

How times have changed.

Nearly four years later, the IDF's social media strategy is much more sophisticated, offering online audiences regular and engaging updates on the progress of Operation Pillar of Defense.

Comparing 2009 with 2012: YouTube and Twitter

The differences are striking. In the 2009 post, I included a link to this YouTube video:

 

As I noted at the time, this bland 'press statement' delivered by Capt. Benjamin Rutland takes place in a washed out 'non-place' with the Israeli flag propped up against the wall. Not exactly engaging content.

It's a far cry from the IDF's most recent YouTube videos which now include short, snappy infographic explainers:

 

And dramatic images of "precision strikes" in which the viewer is on-board with the missile, transported to a video-game like first person perspective:

(These videos offer a compelling illusion - apparently taking the viewer closer to the conflict, but at the same time distancing the viewer from the human cost as airstrikes appear to primarily affect buildings, infrastructure or only the most "evil" of enemies.)

   

Back in 2009, Twitter was mainly used as a way of linking to exceptionally dry updates on the IDF Spokesperson blog which were often written in impenetrable military jargon. On both the blog and the Twitter feed there was little evidence of the IDF trying to influence, drive and engage in the conversation around the conflict.

  

Now the IDF Twitter feed is being written in plain English. What's more, the IDF is also using hashtags (#IsraelUnderFire), encouraging Twitter users to retweet their content and creating imagery that the IDF believe will be circulated by online communities.

It is also posting all manner of facts and figures and commenting on the issues which might affect the outcome of the battle for public opinion.

From 2009 to 2012: The IDF's social media learning curve 

In 2009, Noah Shachtman revealed in Wired just how ad hoc the planning for the social media element of the information war had been during Operation Cast Lead, describing the IDF's YouTube campaign as "off-the-cuff" - a last-minute idea by a group of "twenty-something" soldiers.

Shortly after Operation Cast Lead, the IDF's Twitter fell silent for 179 days and only began updating again in August 2009. In December, Haaretz reported that a new media unit would be set up to engage online audiences on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

In the three years since then, the IDF has clearly revisited its approach to social media. According to Reuters the Israeli foreign ministry invested $15 million dollars in social media in 2010 and although the IDF was still learning it was notable that their YouTube channel was beginning to attract the attention of news journalists by the time of the Gaza flotilla raid in May 2010.

A 'behind-the-scenes' TV report demonstrated how the online presence of IDF Spokesperson was updated by a fully operational "New Media desk" by 2011.

Communicating conflict: The blurring boundaries

The 2012 online media campaign for Operation Pillar of Defense is undoubtedly a significant 'improvement' in Israel's attempt to communicate their version of the conflict using social media tools. But challenges remain.

In particular, the use of Twitter more explicitly blurs an already blurred boundary between psychological operations and public information campaigns.

In the last few days, the IDF has addressed all manner of online audiences with its Twitter feed.

Some updates are probably designed to be picked up by journalists - announcing the onset of the airstrikes via Twitter rather than in a news conference was an interesting departure, but hardly surprising given the widespread adoption of Twitter by journalists at media organisations.

A tweet on Sunday was even more obviously directed at journalists:

Advice to reporters in #Gaza, just like any person in Gaza: For your own safety, stay away from #Hamas positions and operatives. — IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 18, 2012

The IDF's Twitter feed is also trying to leverage an active online community which is supportive of Israel's goals by producing content which can be disseminated online through retweets on Twitter and sharing on social networks. Other content, such as the YouTube explainers, can be seen as an attempt to convince sceptics of Israel's military operation.

These activities might all fall into the remit of public information campaigns, but at the same time the account is being used for purposes which could be viewed as a function of psychological operations.

One IDF tweet issued a warning to Hamas operatives and as Stuart Hughes pointed out on the BBC's College of Journalism blog the IDF's Twitter account has also attracted the attention of Hamas' military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.

It is no longer unusual for a war of words on Twitter to accompany armed confrontation. (See also ISAF Media vs the Taliban and the Kenyan Army vs Al Shabaab.)

Communicating messages successfully to different audiences in the same space is problematic, particularly when the 'audience' can write back. Critics have argued that the IDF's Twitter feed is a distasteful addition to an immoral military campaign. The Now Lebanon blog, for example, headlined a post with the title: 'IDF cheerily live-tweets infanticide'.

And the unanswered question is this: what difference, if any, will the IDF's social media campaign make?

A template for the future?

Nevertheless, the IDF's social media campaign in support of Operation Pillar of Defense might prove to be a template for future information operations online as militaries attempt to influence a more fiercely contested informational battlespace.

In 2010, Lt. Gen. W. Caldwell, Dennis Murphy and Anton Menning published an article in the Australia Army Journal in which they suggested that the US military could learn from the IDF's use of social media.

I think they were wrong then in relation to the Gaza conflict in 2009, but they might have subsequently been proved right by events in 2012.

Five links from 2011: 'Twitter'

I am picking out a few of the more interesting links from my 2011 delicious bookmarks. On Monday, I selected five from my 'war reporting' tag. 

Today, I've selected another five from among the bookmarks I labelled 'Twitter' in my delicious account. 

Enjoy!

1. 'Visualising the New Arab Mind'

Computational historian Kovas Boguta visualises the Twitter influence network around the revolution in Egypt.

2. 'The man who tweeted the attack on Osama Bin Laden - without knowing it'

In May, computer programmer Sohaib Athar provided Twitter updates of the US mission to kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Athar was unaware of the significance of what he was tweeting at the time but he knew something was up:

"Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)."

The Washington Post collected his tweets using Storify. 

3. 'Taliban join the Twitter revolution'

Meanwhile, Twitter's rapid uptake by all and sundry included the Taliban in May and Somali insurgent group Al Shabaab by December. 

A rather surreal interactive war of words online now accompanies serious military activity on the ground as ISAFMedia and alemarahweb engage in disputes over Afghanistan while HSMPress take on Kenya's military spokesperson Major Emmanuel Chirchir.    

4. Libya air strikes: NATO uses Twitter to help gather targets

"Potentially relevant tweets are fed into an intelligence pool then filtered for relevance and authenticity, and are never passed on without proper corroboration. However, without "boots on the ground" to guide commanders, officials admit that Twitter is now part of the overall "intelligence picture"."

5.  British Prime Minister considers curbing Twitter use after UK riots

August's riots in the UK prompted consideration of whether the use of Twitter and social media should be restricted.

As it turned out, BlackBerry Messenger appeared to be the communication tool of choice and recent research by the LSE/Guardian claims that Twitter was more useful in the aftermath to organise clean ups than to incite disorder. 

RAF technician deletes blog after criticising Condoleezza Rice's visit to Afghanistan

I used to follow a blog about the life of an RAF technician who services Chinook helicopters. He called himself "Sensei Katana" and was deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan in January.

Just over a month later his blog disappeared without warning and now all you see when you visit his website is this.

According to the Ministry of Defence, Sensei Katana became "concerned" about his blog and stopped blogging.

Sensei Katana’s Blog

Sensei Katana's been blogging since at least May 2007. Although his website has been taken down, I still have access to some of his blog posts. They’re mainly about his everyday life with occasional references to his work in the RAF.

In December, he told readers that he was going to Afghanistan as part of Operation Herrick. I was looking forward to regular updates over the next six months, but he only wrote four posts from theatre.

In his final post before removing the blog, he described how poor visibility nearly caused a Russian cargo plane to crash land into a line of British helicopters. But it was the post prior to this one that caught my attention.

Published on 10 February, it chronicled the visit of US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to Kandahar Airbase three days previously. She was accompanied by British foreign secretary David Miliband.

Sensei Katana wasn't too impressed with Ms Rice's visit offering her several pointers:

"Please dress accordingly – on a base full of people wearing nothing but camo/combat clothing, arriving [in] a business suit is going to stand out somewhat."
"Please don't tell the media what you're going to do until you've actually gone and done it and are now somewhere else. Like France."

The final point was a small detail about the arrangements made for Ms Rice's visit to the base. Sensei Katana claimed that this was broadcast on Sky and Al-Jazeera, was picked up by a local militia and inadvertently triggered a rocket attack on the base.

He concluded with this advice to the US Secretary of State:

"In short, next time you feel like coming here, don't."

Blogging Regulations at the Ministry of Defence

The Ministry of Defence has strict rules about blogging and although I admired his honesty, I wasn't convinced the reaction to such a post would be too positive among Sensei Katana's senior commanders.

A document released in August 2007 states that military personnel are not allowed to communicate in public without the explicit consent of a commanding officer. This directive (2007DIN03-006) specifically mentions:

"Self publishing or otherwise releasing material on the internet or similar sharing technologies, for example through a blog, podcast or other shared text, audio or video, including via mobile devices’

In a reply to a Freedom of Information request I made earlier in the year, the MoD told me that these guidelines are:

"not designed to stop our personnel from blogging but instead to ensure that if they do blog, or otherwise communicate in public, about their work they do so in a way that ensures that operational security is upheld, and that standards of political impartiality and public accountability are met."

Why did 'Sensei Katana' stop blogging?

Sensei Katana did not have official consent to keep the blog, placing it outside the MoD's guidelines, and for a while senior officers had no idea he was blogging.

At some point, officers became aware of the existence of the blog. But I was told by a MoD press officer that before the officers spoke to the blogger, "he approached his chain of command to say he had been blogging but had decided to remove it".

The press officer added: 

"The individual in question was not forced to take down his blog by senior commanders and did so entirely of his own accord".

Sensei Katana did remove his blog, deleting it in its entirety without offering any post to explain this course of action.

So why did he do this? Although he had not spoken to the blogger in person, the press officer said:

"Sensei Katana realised that putting up some of the information was not a particularly sensible thing to do. He became concerned that he might cause harm by doing this and decided he did not want to play with fire."

Why are there so few British military blogs? 

Sensei Katana is, (or was), only one blogger, but his story begs the following questions: Do these same concerns mean other British servicemen don't blog? And does this episode help explain why there are so few British blogs written by military personnel?

Apart from the Commanding Officers of HMS Somerset and Nottingham, a blog by a member of the TA, and a new project with The Guardian, there aren’t many British milblogs. In fact, I challenge you to find another one that is updating from theatre.

After the launch of Lachlan MacNeil's 'blog' (note: there's no space to comment) in conjunction with The Guardian, Audrey Gillan wrote this article.

I thought she was going to address the key issue that her article hinted at all along “why are there so few British milblogs when there are so many US servicemen and women publishing their experiences?"

But she didn't. I don't really have an answer either but I am willing to offer a few more ideas.

It's not because the regulations are different. US military regulations on blogging (OPSEC AR530-1) appear to be fairly similar to those of the Ministry of Defence. Military personnel must:

"Consult with their immediate supervisor and their OPSEC (Operational Security) Officer for an OPSEC review prior to publishing or posting information in a public forum."

"This includes, but is not limited to letters, resumes, articles for publication, electronic mail (e-mail), Web site postings, web log (blog) postings, discussion in Internet information forums, discussion in Internet message boards or other forms of dissemination or documentation."

So what are the other possible explanations? One possibility is that the US military establishment is more open to the idea of allowing their servicemen and women to blog. Or better aware, perhaps, of the value of blogs to the military PR machine than their British counterparts.

But other factors are worth considering. Culturally, blogging is a much more established medium in the US than it is in the UK, and there are far fewer potential military bloggers in the British armed forces.

There are still more US personnel in Iraq (due to be around 140,000 by the summer) than the total numbers enrolled in the regular British Army (just over 100,000). It may simply be a case of numbers.

The Ministry of Defence and Blogging

In September last year, General Sir Richard Dannatt complained about the “growing gulf between the army and the nation’.

"When a young soldier has been fighting in Basra or Helmand, he wants to know that the people in their local pub know and understand what he has been doing, and why."

I assume the point Dannatt was making was that the people down the pub don't know much about what is going on. But this is hardly surprising. Apart from the occasional documentary, and the odd news report, we hardly ever hear from troops on the ground.

We only usually only find out about our servicemen and women when they are a silent face, or just a name, in a news report telling us of another casualty in a far off distant land.

And when we do hear from them, it is always through a tightly controlled media-military complex, a relationship made more prominent in recent times by the increased necessity of embedding journalists on safety grounds.

Maybe the need for operational security means it has to be this way. But it doesn't seem to be the case in the United States, where the public still receive regular updates from their blogging soldiers despite tighter regulations. (Here is my current favourite.)

If the British public had similar direct access to the experiences of soldiers through a blog, it might mean they could take a more active interest in Afghanistan and Iraq, enabling them to more closely identify with, relate to, and engage with those on the ground.

I wonder why, then, the MoD hasn't encouraged more servicemen and women to keep blogs and keep them within the rules.

Why, for example, did senior officers not suggest to Sensei Katana that rather than closing his blog down, he might like to carry on blogging in a more acceptable manner, within the MoD's guidelines?

After all, according to acclaimed US milblogger, Matthew Burden, military blogs are the "best PR the military has", providing a direct link between the front line and the home front “a key relationship to maintain in any war."