From UCI
The U.S. incursions in Iraq and Afghanistan, among their other notable and notorious accomplishments, will be recognized and remembered for a 21st century first, says a researcher in Irvine, who notes these conflicts will go down history as the initial 'YouTube wars.' While American military authorities have sought to carefully monitor and control soldiers' Web 2.0 conduct -- their blogging, texting, online chatting, social media posting and video uploading -- great amounts of information has flown from the field, including the visual and potentially highly persuasive vids popping up online through free services like YouTube, the prof says. Some of it early on was surreptitious or samizdat in nature, posted only after soldiers return home. Now the videos document operations, advocate for causes, seek to prove the efficacy of violent techniques or mock or belittle the enemy.
What will history make of proliferating online videos from soldiers in combat?
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