24 November 2008

Results are in: Folks read milblogs for a variety of reasons!

It should come as no surprise, but we read milblogs for a variety of reasons. Last week's survey asked you to share why you check in on milblogs and the results were:

What do you value most from reading Soldier's blogs?

  • 2 (18%) Augment the viewpoints published by main-stream media
  • 1 (9%) Learn what its like to be a Soldier
  • 4 (36%) Understand Soldiers' opinions about current events
  • 4 (36%) Get the "real" story (I don't trust spokesmen or reporters)

Thanks to the 11 of you who took part in this (unscientific, but interesting) poll. That's a few more than we had for the first poll. As you can see, the most popular responses were to get a Soldier's take on what's happening and because you value their input more than official spokespersons or reporters. I find the results fascinating. When I crafted the poll, I anticipated that the first answer (augmenting mainstream news) would be the leading response. Guess that's justification for why this project needs to be done.

In order to make these results a bit more meaningful, it would be great to have even more participation - please forward this link around to anyone and ask them to be a part of this discussion. I've appreciated the comments from the wide variety of people so far (military, DoD civilians, military spouses, and citizens with an interest) - thanks! Keep the dialogue going.

6 comments:

  1. Thats to bad that I was unable to be part of this poll.

    I use milblogs mainly for research, but I have browsed just to see how other peoples lives are like in this situation.

    Share and Discuss even more information about the Military

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  2. I think in the military it blogging is a love-hate relationship. I believe it is severly misunderstood and often maligned. Who is the Army blog expert? Group of experts? Proponent or champion? Is it PA or Operations? FM 3-0, Ch 7 talks about Info Ops, maybe it would think its more in the operations arena?

    Good discussion, I look forward to tracking progress.

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  3. The question you raise, dan, about who is the "expert" for us is a good one! At this point, it's not clear we have a formal expert or group of experts - nor is it clear that we have tagged an organization with the responsibility of developing new media expertise. I've heard that the USMC stood up a New Media Center (but can't find anything definitive on the web). DoD has a New Media Directorate but it doesn't appear that the Army has one yet. With DoD already having a 2-yr start (created in 2006), now seems like a good time to start similar organizations in the services to focus efforts. I'll post more on this topic later ... stay tuned. In the meantime, thanks for the continuing comments.

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  4. Hi from Germany. First, I like your blog, since it raises a couple of interesting questions. Being a spokesperson in NATO myself, I am looking into this new media thing myself. Second, it is quite interesting to see that you are looking for information on US new media activity. I remember that we had a couple of briefings during the last NATO PA conferences...one us from Soldier's media center (Col Simms if I remember correctly) will have to look up the ones from last year. Is your survey still on? Would like to crosspost over at my blog.

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  5. Batteriechef, glad to hear from you. Thanks for your interest in this blog - will be interested to get your input along the way. I have not started the survey of blogs yet ... will get to that in the near future. I plan on using polls here for the foreseeable future - a new question each week - and will post the results as we go. Feel free to crosspost at your own blog.

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  6. Yup, done. Just posted it and asked visitors to particpate in your survey. Will also try to upload the presentations from the NATO PA conference re: US Army efforts in the new media arena. Sorry, link is here: http://pressesprecher.site50.net/wordpress/. Cheers Wolfgang

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