Social Media Use in Contemporary Armed Forces as a Mixed Blessing

It is not only about the information we share willingly, it is also about the privacy features and settings of social media platforms, which, according to researchers, cannot be trusted not to leak information to other layers of the social media platform or to other users and companies with an interest in such information (Bay et al. 2019).

Major Nina Raduha, B.A in Political Science – Defence studies. She holds a master’s degree in criminal law from the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana. She has been employed in the SAF since 2003 and is an infantry officer. She participated in missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Lebanon. In 2016, she completed her senior staff training at the top of her class.

The number of internet users worldwide in 2019 was 4388 billion, which is up 9.1% year-on-year. The number of social media users worldwide in 2019 was 3484 billion, up 9% year-on-year (Chaffey 2019).

WhatsApp is owned by Facebook. The merging of FB Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp is planned for the near future.

In recent years, social media posts by servicemen have revealed Russia’s military presence in eastern Ukraine and Syria, sometimes contradicting the government’s official claim of not having troops stationed there.

This quote was translated into English by the authors of this paper.

TroopTube was an online video-sharing platform of the U.S. Armed Forces via their organisation Military OneSource, established to help military families connect and keep in touch while miles apart. TroopTube allowed people to register as members of one of the branches of the armed forces, family, civilian DoD employees or supporters. Members could upload personal videos from anywhere with an Internet connection. The videos were reviewed for content based on the terms of service before being posted to the site. In May 2009, TroopTube was recognised by the White House office of New Media as an innovative way for people to connect with troops, and was featured in a video produced by the White House. While access to TroopTube was blocked at some military bases, it was accessible via many other military bases and available to military families around the world. On 31 July 2011, The Office of the Secretary of Defense closed the TroopTube website, citing the decline in use as a result of the DoD’s social media policy implemented in February 2010, which permitted wider access to social media and video-sharing platforms (Shachtman 2009).

Svete and Juvan (2016) report on the case of the SAF soldier serving in Afghanistan who was shot in the leg. The incident was reported as having occurred during the performance of regular duties, thus insinuating that the soldier had shot himself by accident. This put the SAF Special Forces’ military skills and professionalism into question. Soldiers in Afghanistan were unable to understand how such imprecise information was fed to the Slovenian public. Reading domestic comments on forums and other social media, some soldiers felt sad, disappointed, and angry.

http://​www.​slovenskavojska.​si.

https://​www.​postanivojak.​si.

All quotes from the interviews were translated into English by the authors of this paper.

Many of the details about how the operation worked remain classified, including precisely where it took place and which Allied force was involved. The NATO StratCom Coe group ran the drill during an exercise with military approval, however, service members were not aware of what was happening. Over the course of four weeks, the researchers developed fake pages and closed groups on Facebook that looked like they were associated with the military exercise, as well as profiles impersonating service members both real and imagined. The researchers also tracked down service members’ Instagram and Twitter accounts and searched for other information available online, some of which an adversary might be able to exploit. By the end of the exercise, the researchers identified 150 soldiers, found the locations of several battalions, tracked troop movements, and compelled service members to engage in “undesirable behaviour”, including leaving their positions against orders (Lapowsky 2019). More information on the experiment can be found in Bays 2019.