The Discerning Texan
-- Edmund Burke
Thursday, December 28, 2006
The Blogs of War: How We Can Win
I wrote this paper as an attempt to describe how the blogosphere works; to situate it vis-a-vis the mainstream media and to indicate some of the ways it can be used as a weapon of information warfare. The reader may find many of the ideas half-baked, and the reader would be right. But perhaps this flawed little monograph can contribute in some small way to a discussion of what the blogosphere is and what it's future might be. I truly believe that "it is possible that in the long run the global public will come to rely on fellow Internet users to learn about the world more than it will from professional journalists."
The Blogosphere at War
Background
There is considerable interest in the idea that "blogs" are somehow able to offset the mainstream media's (MSM) ability to sell a given narrative to the public, a power which is of considerable interest in peace and even more so in war. It is widely recognized that molding public perceptions through narratives is nearly as important in war as the outcomes on the actual battlefield. Palestinian Media Watch convincingly demonstrates that Arab and Muslim organizations have long made influencing international publics through print and broadcast media a strategic goal, especially in any confrontation with Israel. This effort has historically followed two tracks: the establishment of technically sophisticated media outlets like al-Jazeera to sell messages directly to audiences; and mounting information operations aimed at shaping the way in which Western Media outlets cover any issue of interest.
Although these efforts have long been in train, it was Israel's 2006 war with Hezbollah that fully demonstrated how far the the virtual "power of the airwaves" could neutralize physical "airpower", in the striking analogy used by Michael Widlanski. Hezbollah's skillful use of the media during that war, especially in playing up and inflating casualties from an Israeli airstrike at Qana in Southern Lebanon, succeed in generating enough diplomatic pressure to ground the Israeli Airforce -- the strongest airforce in the Middle East -- while permitting Hezbollah to rain rockets down upon Israel. It was a tremendous achievement. Although the IDF dominated the kinetic war against Hezbollah, on the information battlefield things were often the reverse. One IDF spokesmen stationed on the Northern Front recently told an audience how he was haplessly herding literally one thousand journalists, many of whom were besieging him with questions fueled by rumor, innuendo and sometimes outright lie delivered over their Blackberries, radios and cellular phones. The middle-aged spokesman realized how drastically the game had changed from the public relations wars of his youth. Looking out on the hordes of journalists wired to their comms the spokesman realized how out of date he had become. "We were immigrants to a new world in which both the media reporters and the enemy were native".
Read the rest here now!UPDATE: One of Wretcherd's readers suggested another link with a similar message. Check it out.
