Twitter Finds A Place On The Battlefield

The Pentagon is tweeting from Afghanistan, providing followers with a mix of battlefield news, excerpts from officers' speeches, and self-promotion. Kudoes to TechNewsWorld for breaking this story, which has not been widely reported. However, the article contains an odd mix of sharp analysis in some places and, in other places, snap judgments that are simply wrong. You see this kind of criticism of social media a lot, and it's frustrating. TechNewsWorld seems to like the idea of government using social media to communicate, but find the actual implementation icky.

The Pentagon's Twitter effort at the @usfora account is part of an ongoing trend that allows government and other newsmakers to talk directly to their constituents, through Twitter and also through blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and other social media. Until recently, government usually had to go to journalists to communicate with the public; now, social media enables the people to get the government's side of the story directly, without intermediation.

TechNewsWorld insightfully notes the inherent difficulty of the military using Twitter to distribute battlefield news. On the one hand, Twitter and other social media require immediacy. On the other hand, the military needs to go through a thorough approval process before releasing battlefield information to ensure it doesn't tip off the enemy. Mistakes can get people killed.

But not all their insights are that sharp:

Says who? Anybody who thinks that Twitter has not yet proven its effectiveness in delivering serious news simply isn't paying attention. A year and a half ago, I was using Twitter to follow the progress of Southern California brush fires. More recently, Twitter was a news channel in the Mumbai attacks and the US Airways airplane landing on the Hudson River.

And Twitter delivers more mundane news every day. Looking at the past half hour of tweets from people I follow, I see a post from @RichardatDELL about Dell's green energy usage, and a tech headline from InformationWeek Also, @joshalalia links to an article about the closing of historic small businesses in New York, NASA provides an update on the Space Shuttle's flight plan, and @faryl lets me know that Krispy Kreme is giving away free donuts (with the added comment that she wants Dunkin Donuts to come to San Diego). I know none of this is Pulitzer Prize material, but this is the stuff that fills newspapers and now it's on Twitter too. TechNewsWorld goes on to say:

Newspapers also mix the serious with the frivolous; it is their very nature. They contain the comics, sports news, entertainment trivia, and humor, alongside news about war, disasters, and disease. Why is TechNewsWorld holding Twitter to a higher standard?

TechNewsWorld also questions why the Pentagon is on Twitter, given that the Pentagon's "presumed target audience," 18-24 year olds, aren't on Twitter much. TechNewsWorld goes on to note that Twitter is popular among 45-54-year-olds, but the publication doesn't connect the dots. People in the 45-54-year-old demographic aren't joining the military much, but they do vote, and they have children who are 18-24 years old, many of whom are in the military.

P.S. One of my frustrations as a journalist covering Twitter and other social media is that it's often hard for me to contact the people behind the account. So, if the person behind @usfora is reading this, please e-mail me, I'd love to interview you to find out more about what you're doing. I already sent a message to @usfora on Twitter, but Twitter users often don't see those.

P.P.S. The very first wartime use of Twitter was during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in the American Civil War in 1864. Union General John Sedgwick was appalled that his soldiers were ducking Confederate sharpshooters who were 1,000 feet away. He tweeted: "I'm ashamed of you, dodging that way. They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." Seconds later, he fell dead, with a Confederate bullet hole just below his left eye.