Turns out that the Army had previously enforced a social media ban, meaning soldier had no access to Facebook, Twitter, etc. And while I waste most of my day on these social networks and probably shouldn't be trusted to fight for my country as long as Facebook is accessible to me, I would still love to see Tweets from our soldiers in action. I would really love to hear first-hand accounts of the human side of war, which is one of the reasons I'm super excited for the Al Jazeera event "Reporting from the frontlines" tomorrow evening. Hearing the accounts from the people in action themselves humanizes a subject we only hear embellished through whatever biased media source we utilize for our daily news and information.
This reminds me of a previous debate: can social media facilitate social change? How could the use of these networks help soldiers connect with citizens in the US and all over the world for that matter? How would it change the way that the media portrays war?
Of course, blogging or tweeting from Iraq, Afghanistan or any war site for that matter may be dangerous in terms of top security issues, but when approaching it from a source of media information, it could change how we view war altogether.
Just for the sake of humor, the following picture depicts what it would be like if historical events were documented via Facebook statuses:
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