Seizing the Digital High Ground: Military Operations and Politics in the Social Media Era
Masters thesis — National Defense University (Joint Advanced Warfighting School), 2015. Full text: https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA622701
Arguments
Seizing the Digital High Ground: Military Operations and Politics in the Social Media Era
It names the mechanism of modern information warfare: social media has decisively altered the speed, scrutiny, and sensitivity of the military's operational environment — imposing values and manipulating the news is increasingly difficult for governments and Great Powers.
Unless the military vastly improves its understanding of social media's utility and invests more in applying it, it risks losing relevance and becoming a blunt instrument for executing political aims and providing security in the 21st century; the British military's current doctrinal view is limited, best characterised as caution, with opinion divided on relative threats and opportunities.
Why it matters
It names the mechanism of modern information warfare: social media has decisively altered the speed, scrutiny, and sensitivity of the military's operational environment — imposing values and manipulating the news is increasingly difficult for governments and Great Powers.
Use when: Treat a new information environment as a threat to be policed and you fall behind; treat it as terrain to be seized and you stay relevant — caution is a doctrine, not a strategy.