Social Media at the US Department of Defense

With the social media policy prohibiting command from blocking access to social media indefinitely on their nonclassified network, the US Department of Defense made a public decision to embrace social media, the origins of which I profiled on my blog earlier this year.  This podcast is about the shift from command and control to a network hierarchy inside the US Military.

 

“We’re in the churning point, [and we’re moving] from a hierarchical to a networked structure," says Jack Holt, director of emerging media at the US Dept. of Defense, who I sat down with at the PRSA International Conference in DC last month for this podcast.  According to Jack, when it comes to social media, DoD is moving from command and control to a more distributed, network hierarchy, a move that depends heavily on teaching service members not so much about social media tools, but rather the path to peace in a networked world.

 

Beyond public relations and public affairs applications of social media, the larger opportunity social media  networked information technology presents is the ability to better manage knowledge inside to organization, and better preserve organizational intelligence in an organization where service members frequently transition in and out of different operations and commands.

 

Other topics discussed include:  The Blogger Roundtable at DoD Live, social media training, Al Qaeda’s online effectiveness, use of video at the Gaza Flotilla Raid and speed versus accuracy. Follow Jack Holt on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jack_holt.

 

 

• US Navy Rear Admiral TL McCreary on Crisis Communications
• Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Robert Hastings
• Social Media Training the US Armed Forces at DINFOS

 

@EricSchwartzman provides online communication training, strategy and social media governance to public relations, public affairs, corporate communications and marketing specialists. He has extensive experience integrating emerging information technologies into organizational communications programs through public speaking, hands-on training seminars, consulting and the development of corporate policies on social media usage.

His clients have included Boeing, BYU, City National Bank, Environmental Defense Fund, Government of Singapore, Johnson & Johnson, NORAD Northcomm, Southern California Edison, UCLA, US Dept. of State, United States Army, US Embassy of Athens, the United States Marine Corps and many small to medium-sized companies and agencies.

Eric is the instructor behind PRSA’s top-rated social media training seminars, the Social Media Boot Camp and the Social Media Master Class, which are offered monthly in the US.

His book "Social Marketing to the Business Customer" with Paul Gillin about B2B applications of social media communications is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders.