Army begins tweeting from frontlines

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 2 Jun 2009 at 14:18

The US Army has turned to Twitter to feed the public news updates about its progress in Afghanistan.

Among its first postings about insurgents killed and detained, the military tweeted on Tuesday: "Afghan & coalition forces killed six militants in Paktika Province overnight during a (sic) operation to capture a Taliban commander."

The Twitter feed is a part of a broader social-networking strategy being employed by the army, which has seen US forces given their own Facebook page and a channel on YouTube to post videos about their work.

The army says the decision to use the latest internet craze was meant to "engage non-traditional audiences directly with news, videos, pictures and other information from Operation Enduring Freedom" and to "preempt extremist propaganda."

The military claims using a site more commonly devoted to people talking about their social lives does not trivialise the gravity of its operations in Afghanistan.

"There are lots of serious people on Twitter getting news alerts," says US military spokesman Colonel Greg Julian. "It's a supplementary tool, not a standalone."

The military claims more than 1,400 people and organisations have signed up to follow its Afghanistan "tweets," while it has more than 4,700 Facebook fans.

Julian claims three people have been assigned to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube duty but the military was looking to expand operations with a small staff devoted to its new media strategy.