by Jon Husband
September 6, 2008 at 9:42 pm · Filed under
CNN, Change, Culture, Emergent, Facebook, Public Media, Social Media, Twitter, User Revolution, Web 2.0
I’ve just been watching an interesting new component of CNN prime-time news, wherein Rick Sanchez, one of the current anchors, flashes cherry-picked items from Twitter (Rick’s Twitter Feedback) and from Facebook (Rick’s Facebook Feedback) in order to counter or reinforce the story he has just introduced.
I’m (still) all for Web 2.0 and listening to the voices of the great unwashed, but there are key aspects of using this approach that leave me skeptical or cold. He and his colleagues get to pick which items they want to use add emphasis or colour an issue.
Nevertheless, I applaud CNN for actually paying attention to what is happening on the Web.
Mashable has more.
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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.
