Drudge Retort: Red Meat for Yellow Dogs
Tuesday, April 01, 2008

This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, "Blogs and Military Information Strategy," offers a third approach -- co-opting bloggers, or even putting them on the payroll. "Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering," write the report's co-authors, James Kinniburgh and Dororthy Denning.

Liberal Blog Advertising Network

Menu

Subscriptions

Author Info

OzarkAggie

MORE STORIES

Special Features

Comments

Admin's note: Participants in the discussion of this weblog entry should note the site's moderation policy.

I'm all for allowing members of the military to blog and speak their mind, but I think the government has enough paid PR in the regular MSM. No doubt there'll be a wink and nod for the "right stuff" but unless blogging is open to everyone this smacks of propaganda.

Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence... to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering. On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.

An alternative strategy is to "make" a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog. In some cases, their talents might be redirected toward operating blogs as part of an information campaign. If a military blog offers valuable information that is not available from other sources, it could rise in rank fairly rapidly.

This explains Corky/Seaton/whatever the fuck.

Keyboard Commandoes: Blogging for DOD

Does that mean they are not wearing underwear when they are blogging?

Ya have to catapolt the propaganda doncha know.

Comments are closed for this entry.

Drudge Retort

Home | News | Comments | User Blogs | Nooner | Back Page | RSS Feed | RSS Spec | Copyright 2009 World Readable