We recently joined Twitter (@MADREspeaks), excited to connect with a growing community and a vibrant online conversation. In the past weeks, we have updated our followers on our latest efforts to promote women’s human rights in Afghanistan, and we have helped to generate an important focus on the need to end the war.
This week, news outlets reported that the US military in Afghanistan has also joined the Twitterverse. As a part of a new communications strategy that includes Facebook and YouTube, the US military is now tweeting their attacks on the ground, just as the New York Times reported yesterday that these military efforts are intensifying.
Multiple news stories explain that the US military launched these new online accounts to counter the Taliban’s advanced communications strategies. But a quick search for tweets directed at the US military in Afghanistan shows a different target audience: the US public. Many of these tweets in response to the military’s messages indicate that people follow @usfora as a way to support the war effort or a way to receive up-to-the-minute updates on a friend or family member deployed.
The Twitter format demands a short, terse writing style, and the reader often is forced to fill in the blanks. The shortened RT means retweet, the number 2 is often substituted for the word “to,” words are often abbreviated. But reading through the military’s tweets, it seems that another sort of omission and abbreviation is going on.
Afghan & coalition forces killed six militants in Paktika Province overnight during a operation to capture a Taliban commander.
Afghan National Army troops, advised by coalition forces, killed 35 militants and wounded 13 during operations in Zabul province today.
There is no room for context or detail in Twitter. Who were these militants? What damage was done by this attack?
U.S. confirms a # of civilians were killed in Farah, Afgh, but unable to differentiate btwn Taliban and civ b/c the dead are buried
Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) estimates that as many as 97 civilians were killed in a US air strike in Farah in early May. In one brief and chillingly concise tweet, the US military is able to cast doubt over such painstaking reports and sanitize the war for over 2,000 Twitter followers, a number that is growing rapidly.
Twitter is all about brevity and speed, and therein lies its appeal. Like any powerful tool, its impact will be determined by who wields it. The US military’s tendency to omit unfavorable information will fit right in with Twitter, and the destruction of the war in Afghanistan will be erased from the picture.
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