Military Adopts New Media

Military adopts new media
Blogs and more are now tools for communication
By William Cole (Honolulu Star-Advertiser)

The Army still uses bulletin boards for messages, Champoux said, “but what are our soldiers doing? They are walking right past them with their heads down as they are texting Mom, Dad, girlfriend, wife or squad leader.”

Senior commanders are now often blogging, some awkwardly, some with enthusiasm. “Milbloggers” and “blogger’s roundtables” for online reporting sources are the new buzzwords within Defense Department communications.

“If you look at the demographics of print media … (and) how we are all communicating, we’re not totally reliant on print media like we use to be,” Champoux said.

Pacific Air Forces, headquartered in Hawaii, was so proud that it hosted some local bloggers during recent Rim of the Pacific war games that it wrote a news story about just that fact.

Photo courtesy U.S. Army.