CONVERGINGMEDIACase StudyMilitary PR in the Digital Age

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Public relations has a long connection with the military and wartime communication. After all, father of modern public relations Edward Bernays got his start developing propaganda promoting U.S. military involvement in World War I. Gaining and keeping public support has long been a key to any military endeavor, and public relations and wartime propaganda have played a major role in shaping public opinion. But as media technology has changed and converged over the last century, so have the PR efforts of governments looking for support for various wars.

Many historians point to Vietnam as an important turning point for the way the media covered war, and a wake-up call for military image handlers hoping to control that flow of information: the relatively unfiltered images of death and destruction broadcast into American living rooms via television fueled a growing antiwar sentiment. This was an early form of convergence, in which stark journalism was now appearing on television, and the military learned its lesson, adapting methods to regain control of information coming out of war zones. For example, when President Ronald Reagan ordered troops to invade the small Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983, it was days before any journalists were allowed on the island, many being kept offshore on a navy ship and having to settle for briefings from officers who decided what they could—and couldn’t—know. (Official briefings were common during Vietnam as well, but journalists also had greater freedom of movement and could augment coverage beyond the “official” line.)

Following Grenada, journalists and others accused Reagan of trying to shield himself from criticism by keeping the public in the dark about the outcome of major policy decisions. When President George H. W. Bush sent troops into Iraq during the First Gulf War, the military had turned to the practice of “embedding” reporters with particular units. Although this certainly gave reporters greater access than the deck of a ship miles offshore, complaints about media control being placed in the hands of military image handlers persisted. But by the time of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions in 2002 and 2003, the convergence of nearly all aspects of communication with the Internet had changed the game again—and it’s still changing.

For example, the U.S. Army faced a public relations nightmare when military police personnel took digital photographs documenting torture of prisoners held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Before being seized by military authorities, these photos were believed to have circulated via e-mail—something that could not have happened in earlier wars. Photos like these, and the January 2012 video documenting four U.S. Marines urinating on Taliban corpses in Afghanistan, have complicated U.S. efforts at winning the trust and respect of the population in that war-torn part of the globe. And though both of these examples deal with scandalous behavior of soldiers in the line of duty, media is making the private or personal moments and thoughts of soldiers part of the public conversation, for good or ill.

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As with the celebrities we talked about in the opening of this chapter, public relations in a social media world is a complex place, with opportunities as well as pitfalls. In recent years, troops and their families have used social media to stay in touch with each other, an important way to boost morale in a war zone and at home. Some of these messages home became public and even went viral, including a 2010 YouTube video of soldiers in Afghanistan blowing off steam by dancing to a Lady Gaga song. The much-viewed video was praised by the military for demonstrating a good sense of humor. Military bloggers also helped connect the home front with the front lines in a way that carried more authenticity than any press release.

On the other hand, some of the videos, photographs, and messages posted and shared by soldiers on social media have had the opposite effect. From pictures of inappropriate or dishonorable behavior while in uniform to ideological rants against the commander in chief of the military (the president) to sites that make crude sexual and threatening posts about female soldiers, the military has struggled for years to come up with a useful and enforceable social media policy. Complicating the task even further are social media sites by former military members or civilians, whom the Department of Defense has no control over or ability to punish.¹

Still another dimension to converged military public relations is that it’s a tool that anyone can use—including your enemies. Terrorist groups have taken advantage of the inexpensive global reach of the Internet to post videos ranging from propaganda statements to executions. This new reality of waging war in the face of converged media was the subject of a 2009 report by Cori E. Dauber, published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. Titled YouTube War: Fighting in a World of Cameras in Every Cell Phone and Photoshop on Every Computer, the report argues that “terrorist attacks ought to be understood as consciously crafted media events”: “Their true target is not that which is blown up—that item or those people—for that is merely a stage prop. The goal, after all, is to have a psychological effect (to terrorize), and it isn’t possible to have such an effect on the dead.”² The report finds that mainstream television journalism often uses footage released by insurgents because of the visual power of the imagery—even though this practice actually expands the audience for the enemy propaganda, essentially encouraging more attention-getting “newsworthy” actions.

The U.S. military’s public relations effort, then, must contend with the way converged and viral media makes its job trickier and more difficult to control. Part of fighting a war in an era of global and converged media involves recognizing that public perceptions matter—and because of this, images matter. And these images are more accessible and easier to disseminate than ever before. Soldiers and military leaders need to be made aware of a major consequence of the inevitable spread of these images: It undermines their terrorism-fighting mission.