alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

April 1, 2008

If You Want a Friend In Washington, Get a Blog

by AltHippo @ 10:48 am. Filed under Uncategorized

Wired:

Since the start of the Iraq war, there’s been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs — and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops’ time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.

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.

I’ve suggested to folks in our fair city that the Bushies have constructed a message machine that includes communication and cooperation between, say, the White House, Fox News, Limbaugh, and the rest of the right-wing freak show (Drudge Report, NRO, Powerline, etc.) I’ve pointed to David Brock’s Republican Noise Machine and Robert Greenwald’s Out-Foxed as substantiating that view, but still, my colleagues in the VLWC insist that such coordination is just a paranoid fantasy on my part.

Of course the Bushies use the blogs. It’s one of the most common-sensical things that they do. What other influences exist in popular culture to get your message out? Country-western music?

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2 Responses to “If You Want a Friend In Washington, Get a Blog”

  1. KathyF Says:
    April 3rd, 2008 at 6:33 am

    Except, don’t confuse the military with the Bushies! They are not one and the same. We need to nip that meme in the bud, imo.

  2. AltHippo Says:
    April 3rd, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    In this case it’s not yet clear what part of the PR apparatus suggested this. If I was a full-time reporter I’d write an investigative report of who’s in charge of what in the message machine.

    A little bit of a back story: a couple of years ago the Pentagon PR folks sponsored a “Freedom Walk” on the Mall and environs the weekend of the 9.11 anniversary to support the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. KCinDC and I both looked into this, and it turned out that Pentagon Office of Media Outreach was working with a right-wing group, Russo Marsh&Rogers to promote this. The same group sponsored the “Truth Tour” of Iraq- sending right-wing talk radio hosts to Iraq to promote a pro-Bush message.

    With respect to this story I don’t know if there’s an agenda or not. The notion of using bloggers as a propaganda tool has a look and feel similar to the “Truth Tour” story.

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