Blogs and Military Information Strategy

Abstract

This monograph explores the possibility of incorporating blogs and blogging into military information strategy, primarily as a tool for influence. Towards that end, the authors examine the value of blogs as targets of and/or platforms for military influence operations and supporting intelligence operations. A blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, graphics, or video. Some blogs function as personal online diaries. The authors present a balanced critique of the positive and negative aspects of blogging, and then discuss the potential for using blogs in influence operations. Their analysis starts with the foreign information environment against which blogs would be generated. Here lies the crux of the issue: can U.S. bloggers properly use language and culture, and an understanding of how information is spread within a specific culture, to influence members or sectors of a population? The idea is so difficult to implement, the authors note, that it may require the United States to "clandestinely recruit or hire prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence already within the target nations, group, or community to pass the message." Blogging for influence requires the ability to debate points that require inside knowledge about several topics. Insurgents, for example, have been instructed to explain on the Internet why advancing jihad is important and how to continue contrasting Islam from other religions. The authors offer guidance on how to conduct Web-log intelligence collection and blog operations and how such operations might advance the cause of influence operations. They also describe various methods of measuring the effectiveness of a blog's influence.

ISBN 1-933749-14-8