War 2.0 – The IDF are using YouTube and Twitter
by Rob Paterson
Increasingly war today is a matter of winning the “people’s war” Organizations such as Al Qaeda have become masters at using social media to both train people and also to tell their story. Often actions are in effect stage managed such as the Fallujah killing of Blackwater men that was filmed throughout and broadcast immediately.
Until now conventional forces have kept away from learning how to tell their side of the story. Maybe – as with business – their essential bureaucratic nature and need for control – inhibited the use of social media.
But the IDF have decided that they have to get their story out there and are agressively using YouTube and now Twitter. Here is a neat summary with links from Global Dashboard.
Two of my favourite blogs, MountainRunner and Danger Room highlight the IDF’s attempt to win over the blogosphere using Twitter and You Tube. Why? Because according to the head of the IDF’s press team: “The blogosphere and new media are another war zone, we have to be relevant there.”
The YouTube channel was created with the aim of distributing footage of precision airstrikes. Interestingly YouTube took down some of the ‘exclusive footage’ showing the IDF’s operational success in operation Cast Lead against Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip, but appears to have returned some of the footage due to popular demand.
Elsewhere the Israeli consulate in New York hosted a press conference on Twitter in order to answer the public’s questions regarding the situation in Gaza. How one measures the success of the twitterference is difficult but, as both Matt and Nathan point out, reducing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to tweets of 140 characters or less makes for interesting reading:
‘We hav 2 prtct R ctzens 2, only way fwd through neogtiations, & left Gaza in 05. y Hamas launch missiles not peace?’,
‘we’re not at war with the PAL people. we’re at war with a group declared by the EU& US a terrorist org’.
I think that this is just the beginning
