Social Media and the Armed Forces

Eva Moehlecke de Baseggio has been working as the project manager of the research project Social Media as Communication Channel of the Swiss Armed Forces at the Military Academy (MILAC) at ETH Zurich since 2016. She graduated from the University of Zurich with a Master's degree in Sociology and a minor in Popular Cultures. Olivia Schneider is a research assistant on the subject of social media at the Chair for Military Sociology at the Military Academy (MILAC) at ETH Zurich. In order to obtain her PhD at the University of Zurich, she analyses the public reporting on the Swiss Armed Forces as well as the communication of the organisation itself. She pays particular attention to the follow-up discussion and its deliberative quality. Tibor Szvircsev Tresch has been a lecturer in military sociology at the Military Academy (MILAC) at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) since August 2008. Born in 1967 in Zug, Switzerland, he studied sociology, political science and criminology at the University of Zurich. Szvircsev Tresch received a doctorate from the University of Zurich in 2005 for his work "Europe's Changing Armed Forces: From Compulsory Military Service to Voluntary Armed Forces - An Empirical Study of European Armed Forces 1975-2003". From 2002 to 2006 he was an assistant lecturer in military sociology. From August 2006 to August 2007 he worked as a Senior Research Fellow at NATO Defense College in Rome. From September 2007 to July 2008, he worked as a research assistant at the Directorate for Security Policy (DSP) and conducted the research project "Challenges in recruiting military personnel in Europe: Lessons learned for Switzerland" at the Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich. From 2008 to 2012 he was Secretary of the European Research Group on Military & Society (ERGOMAS) and since 2008 he is Working Group Coordinator of ERGOMAS Working Group on Recruitment & Retention.

Introduction.- Part I Social Media in the Everyday Life of Military Personnel.- Ubiquity with a Dark Side: Civil-Military Gaps in Social Media Usage.- Social Media Use at a U.S. Military Academy: Perceived Implications for Performance and Behavior.- The Need for Visibility: the Influence of Social Media Communication on Swiss Armed Forces Officers.- Part II Gender-Specific Representation on Social Media.- Managing Femininity through Visual Embodiment: The Portrayal of Women on the Instagram Accounts of the Swedish and the Swiss Armed Forces.- (Dis-)Empowered Military Masculinities? Recruitment of Veterans by PMSCs Through YouTube.- Part III Social Media Discussions as Insights into Public Opinion.- The Importance of Discussions on Social Media for the Armed Forces.- Debating German Special Forces: a Scandal in the Military, a Documentary, and a Thread.- Sentiment of Armed Forces Social Media Accounts in the United Kingdom: An Initial Analysis of Twitter Content.- A Transparent Network- Soldiers' Digital Resistance and Economic Unrest.- Part IV Risks and Dangers of Social Media.- The Dark Side of Interconnectivity: Social Media as a Cyber-Weapon?.- Misinformation and Disinformation in Social Media as the Pulse of Finnish National Security.- Social Media Use in Contemporary Armed Forces as a Mixed Blessing.

"This book is timely for a multitude of reasons. ... scholars in sociology and political science who study the military will benefit from reading it ... . Students attending professional military education courses and those in pre-commissioning programmes would also benefit from reading the book, especially the cross-national comparisons. ... senior military and defence leaders, as well as educators in professional military education institutions, would also benefit from reading this volume ... ." (Heidi A. Urben, Res Militaris, Vol. 11 (2), 2021)

“This book is timely for a multitude of reasons. … scholars in sociology and political science who study the military will benefit from reading it … . Students attending professional military education courses and those in pre-commissioning programmes would also benefit from reading the book, especially the cross-national comparisons. … senior military and defence leaders, as well as educators in professional military education institutions, would also benefit from reading this volume … .” (Heidi A. Urben, Res Militaris, Vol. 11 (2), 2021)