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Friended at the Front
For most of us, clicking \"like\" on social media has become fairly routine. For a Marine, clicking \"like\" from the battlefield lets his social network know he's alive. This is the first time in the history of modern warfare that US troops have direct, instantaneous connection to civilian life back home. Lisa Ellen Silvestri'sFriended at the Frontdocuments the revolutionary change in the way we communicate across fronts. Social media, Silvestri contends, changes what it's like to be at war.Based on in-person interviews and online with the US Marines,Friended at the Frontexplores the new media habits, attitudes, and behaviors of troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some of the complications that emerge in their wake. The book pays particular attention to the way US troops use Facebook and YouTube to narrate their experiences to civilian network members, to each other, and, not least of all, to themselves. After she reviews evolving military guidelines for social media engagement, Silvestri explores specific practices amongst active duty Marines such as posting photos and producing memes. Her interviews, observations, and research reveal how social network sites present both an opportunity to connect with civilians back home, as well as an obligation to do so - one that can become controversial for troops in a war zone.Much like the war on terror itself, the boundaries, expectations, and dangers associated with social media are amorphous and under constant negotiation.Friended at the Frontexplains how our communication landscape changes what it is like to go to war for individual service members, their loved ones, and for the American public at large.
eBook
Connected Soldiers
2023 Gold Medal in Biography/Memoir from the Military Writers
Society of America John Spencer was a new second lieutenant in 2003
when he parachuted into Iraq leading a platoon of infantry soldiers
into battle. During that combat tour he learned how important unit
cohesion was to surviving a war, both physically and mentally. He
observed that this cohesion developed as the soldiers experienced
the horrors of combat as a group, spending their downtime together
and processing their shared experiences. When Spencer returned to
Iraq five years later to take command of a troubled company, he
found that his lessons on how to build unit cohesion were no longer
as applicable. Rather than bonding and processing trauma as a
group, soldiers now spent their downtime separately, on computers
communicating with family back home. Spencer came to see the
internet as a threat to unit cohesion, but when he returned home
and his wife was deployed, the internet connected him and his
children to his wife on a daily basis. In Connected
Soldiers Spencer delivers lessons learned about effective
methods for building teams in a way that overcomes the distractions
of home and the outside world, without reducing the benefits gained
from connections to family.
eBook