by Rob Paterson
December 18, 2007 at 4:23 pm · Filed under
Al Qaeda, Andy Carvin, Social Media
This is so cool that I had to quote Andy in full – My read of the client is that they are very sophisticated in the use of Social Media and could teach the US Military a lot if they chose to listen to an expert practitioner. The Roman Army was never too proud to learn and to take on technology from their opponents.
According to Al Jazeera and a number of other news sources, the latest video from Osama bin Laden’s wingman, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, came with a brief note that Zawahiri would like to take questions from the public and answer them in his next propaganda video. The Al Qaeda-associated websites that first published the video said that Zawahiri would conduct an “open interview” in which user questions could be submitted over the Net. However, they didn’t go into too much detail as to how those questions would actually be collected or selected.
Just in case Dr. Zawahiri is reading this blog, I thought I’d offer some friendly suggestions, from one Web 2.0 enthusiast to another.
1. Accept tough questions. If all of the questions you answer are along the lines of, “What’s it like to be the coolest surgeon-turned-terrorist?” “What’s your favorite hidout?” or “Diamonds or pearls?” you’ll quickly lose credibility among bloggers.
2. Be sure to vet the people asking the questions. You may have heard that CNN and YouTube recently had a debate in which some of the people whose videos were used had connections with various political campaigns. CNN is still taking a tongue-lashing from the blogosphere, and Anderson Cooper even had to issue an apology. So when you select questions, be sure to note publicly if they have any potential conflicts of interest, such as, “This question comes from David, who as an undergrad attended a rally against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and once sent Yassir Arafat a birthday card.” There’s nothing worse than having anyone question your professional integrity.
3. Consider using open source. I’m sure you must be a big fan of Digg, so perhaps you’ve come across Pligg, an open source content management system that lets you do Digg-liking social news polling. The online community is a sucker for anyone who embraces open source, so that’ll go a long way in getting coverage on sites like Techcrunch, Boing Boing or maybe even Slashdot. Speaking of Slashdot…
4. Be prepared for the Slashdot effect. If you’re gonna ask the public to contribute questions, be prepared for the traffic. If your server goes down for even a few minutes, you’ll never hear the end of it, and it’ll be the last time Osama lets you pull a stunt like this. And who wants to go back to the old-school way of coming up with your own questions when all the cool kids are doing otherwise?
5. Trust your users. If the public rates a question particularly highly, you ignore it at your own risk. There’s nothing worse than participating in a social news project only to find out that the editors have completely ignored the community’s preferences and gone with a question they wanted to use.
6. Consider tagging. One failing of the YouTube debate was that users had to go to YouTube to submit their questions. 10questions.com, on the other hand, let users go to a variety of uploading tools and then “tag” that content with a keyword, so it could be aggregated easily. For example, if you told users to upload their question to whatever site they chose (including their own blog) and tag it AskDrZawahiri or AskATerrorist, you’d go a long way in terms of winning kudos from folks who are skeptical of anything YouTube does.
7. Remember to have fun with it. You’re bound to get lots of questions like “How could a person trained to do no harm adopt a philosophy that seeks to do as much harm to innocent people as is humanly possible?” or “What do you expect to gain from killing so many of your fellow Muslims?” Try mixing it up a bit and consider questions like, “So Ayman – what’s the story with your forehead?” You know you’re bound to have that question rise through the voting ranks like a softball question for Ron Paul, so why not embrace it? You know we’re all dying to know.
by Rob Paterson
November 28, 2007 at 4:43 pm · Filed under
Al Qaeda, CNN, Conflict, Enterprise 2.0, Nato, Secretary Gates, Taliban, War
Secretary Gates made this statement in a recent speech:
It is just plain embarrassing that al-Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the internet than America. As one foreign diplomat asked a couple of years ago, “How has one man in a cave managed to out-communicate the world’s greatest communication society?” Speed, agility, and cultural relevance are not terms that come readily to mind when discussing U.S. strategic communications.
Only days later, CNN interviews a NATO Official in Afghanistan who echoes the Secretary and insists that we better get good at this or risk losing the real war – which is all political.
The strategy aims to counter years of propaganda video posted on the Internet showing Taliban attacks on NATO forces which fighters use to claim that NATO’s position in the Afghan war is deteriorating.
“The Taliban, who are literally cave-dwellers, are doing better than we are on a key battleground — and that’s video,” said NATO spokesman James Appathurai. “They deploy with videographers. We don’t. They have DVDs out in an hour, we don’t.”
Wielding video cameras like weapons, fighters quickly upload images of their attacks and create a valuable morale booster for their supporters.
Now, after much internal debate, NATO has begun declassifying and posting top secret combat video on YouTube and other Web platforms to try and beat the Taliban at its own game.
“We’re, in a sense, winning the tactical battles, but we’re not focusing enough on the strategic battle, which is public opinion,” said Appathurai.
The link to the excellent report and video is here.
NATO made several video excerpts available to CNN. One excerpt shows an armed Taliban fighter disguised as a woman in a full burqa, taking refuge with women and children to avoid being targeted by NATO.
One disturbing NATO video begins with a birds-eye view of a home in southern Afghanistan where NATO said a high-level Taliban meeting was taking place. Before NATO helicopters took aim at the house, a small boy is posted at the door as a human shield, forcing the NATO chopper pilot to hold fire.
Information is a crucial tool in any war, but is especially important in Afghanistan where the Taliban’s deeds, words and images have portrayed a deteriorating security landscape, with NATO soldiers on the run.
NATO officials argue that this is far from the truth and the country has experienced significant development and growth with constant attention being paid to security problems.
Appathurai said there are hundreds of military combat videos that show the true extent of Taliban engagement and the brutality of their tactics.
He admitted that in the past he had a hard time convincing NATO allies to declassify this sensitive, secret video for wide release. He said on occasion, that will now change.
NATO said the Taliban videos slowly erode the world’s perception of how the Afghanistan mission is progressing. But the Taliban’s media savvy means much more, said one expert.
Videos such as those produced by the Taliban are the lifeblood of terrorist recruiting campaigns, said Glen Jenvey, a UK-based Internet specialist who tracks trends in extremist and jihad content on the Web.
“At one point somebody has actually brainwashed these people to become terrorists, and this is where the recruiting sergeants actually take hold and the online part is an important part of it,” Jenvey said.
This reminds of the the history of the airplane. The first flight was only a few years before WWI. War propelled the technology. With no war, imagine all the people who would have dismissed it. I am getting a feeling that war will propell social media the same way. Real needs to know and to understand and to inform will drive the resources. Business will I think follow.
