International, Public & Corporate Communication Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News Issue # 3 - 2016 FOREWORD This newsletter is aimed at providing Public Affairs practitioners with a short selection of recently posted stories, papers, etc. which may be useful to remain abreast of new trends or to stimulate a debate. Sources are linked and any copyright remains with the authors.
In this issue:
Justin Trudeau: a natural (or constructed) talent for communication? p. 2 News that drew more interest The communication skills of PM Justine Trudeau dominated our hit parade of the past quarter. Followed by several posts carrying Social Media tips. Another post that drew good attention was a speech given by Bill Clinton, as a master piece in terms of content and delivery techniques.
Quite popular was also an image showing a poster with a popular quote on the importance of listening: we tracked the source of the quote and the original explanation.
8 Tips on How to Deal with Negativity on Social Media p. 4 Pokemon GO servers went down and a communication crisis erupted p. 6 Bill Clinton’s Elegant Love Letter To Hillary Was Sly And Effective p. 8 Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood
p. 20
Social Media in the Military: Opportunities, Perils and a Safe Middle Path p. 22
Finally, we re-post here an interesting paper by two Australian officers who reviewed the rationale for the use of social media in the military, by examining the associated benefits and risks. The paper provides an analysis of the most appropriate and effective use of social media by the military. The editor
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it
1
Justin Trudeau: a natural (or constructed) talent for communication? By Franco Veltri Justin Trudeau participated in July in a gay pride march, prompting comments in social media like: “My prime minister makes me happy”. He is probably the most successful contemporary politician and the living evidence that the politics of optimism works. During several international summits, he has been the focus of news imagery, always captured with a smile, joking with his serious international partners. Young and photogenic, he is a skilled communicator (holds two bachelor’s degrees — in literature and in education and taught maths in elementary school, and French and drama in high school) While austerity was the leading formula of his opponents to fix national economy, he rejected it to embrace public investment. He leads a governments that is engaged in a real conversation with the population, since listening is as important as communicating! Everything he says and does percolates optimism, and so far it has worked. According to Decker Communications, he has convinced Canadians to care about politics again. He is real, authentic and warm. More person than politician, admitting what he doesn’t know and conveying empathy helped Justin Trudeau outshine his predecessor. Trudeau has a fresh approach and a magnetism you can’t help but feel. With a dynamic voice, a vocal punch, lightness in his face and an expression that shows he cares, Trudeau connects with people. A living study case for communicators: is he just showing his natural face or a product of perfect PR?. According to a report by the Quebec-based media monitoring firm Influence Communication, generally after a PM is elected in Canada, media coverage typically drops off. Harper’s fell off by 79 per cent and Brian Mulroney’s by 69 per cent one month after they won their election. A report by The Concordian noted instead that since 2015, the coverage of Justin Trudeau in the national media has increased by 40 per cent. And, unlike his predecessors, the coverage has been overwhelmingly positive. The reason for this increase in positive coverage is mainly due to “the [tabloid] magazine style reporting” of Justin Trudeau, said Jean-Francois Dumas, president of Influence Communication, as quoted in Maclean’smagazine. His many summer shirtless sightings, photo-ops with pandas, and his luscious locks has reduced many of Canada’s most prestigious publications to the same level as menial celebrity gossip mags. It would seem as though “Trudeaumania” part II has firmly rooted itself in Canadian media’s prime-ministerial commentary, baring resemblance to a communist state’s media coverage of their glorious leader. (The Concordian)
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it
2
At home, Trudeau’s political opponents claim that the prime minister is using taxpayers’ resources to promote himself on vanity trips abroad. Is his tactics working abroad? Indeed, by presenting Canada as a positive and welcoming place with progressive policies, Trudeau is now a brand for his country. While he is usually shown wearing casual dresses, he was even included by Vanity Fair in the top list of the best dressed celebrities in the world… However, his natural styles remain very casual. Up to allowing pictures to be taken while not wearing a shirt. The very serious magazine Foreign Policy identified that as potentially constructed image (or propaganda?): “…Of course, there are upsides to humanizing the office and linking it to your own living, breathing body. For example, if you’re an autocrat, holding personal power over a state is an extension of your own will. In this view, the topless photo can be a powerful piece of propaganda — as Louis XIV might have said, “L’état c’est ma poitrine.” The golden example of that strategy, of course, is Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin, around the same time as Obama’s Hawaii incident [he was also shown toppleness], doubled down on a photo campaign showing Putin doing manly things — wrestling tigers, fly-fishing, talking to horses — often shirtless, with a barrel chest that wouldn’t look out of place on a bouncer; a man who could take a punch and knock you out in return. In Putin’s case, unlike Trudeau’s and Obama’s, these photos aren’t snapped by paparazzi or ordinary citizens: They come courtesy of Russian presidential photographers — and are duly delivered straight to Russian state media… Trudeau has walked a middle way between Obama’s privacy and Putin’s chest-out publicity. He has been, well, casual, as perhaps befits a man who has been in the public eye since growing up in the court of his father, the late Pierre Trudeau. It’s possible that Trudeau’s toplessness has no political significance beyond the desire of a human man on a hot day to take his shirt off wherever he pleases. But the same cannot be said of the photos of Trudeau’s toplessness. It seems ludicrously unlikely that Ottawa doesn’t understand that the appeal of Trudeau’s body is mixed with that of his policies.” Mr. Trudeau public appearances will continue to be studied, in a search for indicators that his public image is either spontaneous or just very well constructed. It is indeed difficult to come to a conclusion. In some cases he is too good to be true: like when he attended a funeral with his wife and both were nearly perfect in using their body language… (see this analysis of a year ago).
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 3
8 Tips on How to Deal with Negativity on Social Media By Elizabeth Harmon We’d all love our social media pages to be filled with positive comments, but in reality, you're going to get negative responses from time to time. Many businesses panic, respond badly, or avoid social media entirely in the hope to avoid situations like these. The truth is, social media can open businesses up to a world of criticism, but customers are going to talk about your business online, whether you have a social media presence or not. If you manage social media for your business, follow these 8 simple steps to take control of the situation effectively and, ideally, turn your unhappy customer into a loyal brand advocate. 1. Listen You can’t respond to negative comments if you don’t know about them, and while most complaints will come via your Twitter handle or on your Facebook Page, many people don't use these avenues and comment outside of your official properties. It’s therefore important to listen to what's being said beyond your Page. Start off by using tools such as Google Alerts, but for more advanced listening, try free software such as HootSuite, or use paid software like Brandwatch.
(Screenshot from Brandwatch) 2. Always reply It can be tempting to ignore a negative comment, but this isn’t the solution - it'll make your brand look bad and other customers will see that you’re not taking people’s feedback seriously.
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 4
3. Read it twice Before racing to respond, make sure you read the message twice. You don’t want to have misinterpreted it. Do the same for your response which should be polite, considerate and professional. 4. Reply efficiently Although it’s important to take your time in crafting a suitable response, time is also of the essence. The longer you leave it, the more the complaint can snowball, with other customers joining in. It’s therefore important to “nip it in the bud” as quickly as possible. If you don’t have an answer straight away, ensure you acknowledge the comment by saying you’re looking into it and then get back to them again as soon as you have a solution. 5. Take it offline If the response is extremely personal or complex, don’t be afraid to take it offline. Ask for the customer to email or private message you with their contact information. 6. Own up to your mistakes If you’re the one at fault, make sure you actually own up to it. Don’t make excuses. Yes, your supplier may have let you down, or your delivery driver may have been lost, but a customer doesn’t want to hear that. A simple sorry is sometimes all the customer is looking for. However, make sure you see the situation from their perspective and focus on what happened, how it affected them and how you will rectify the situation. Just look at this example from Dave Carroll who had his guitar broken on a United Airlines flight. They refused to take responsibility and so Carroll created a video to name and shame them. The video now has nearly 16 million views and needless to say, after seeing this, United Airlines sat up and took notice. 7. Ignore the trolls Of course, sometimes you may come across people who just want to cause trouble for your business. If you’ve provided an honest, genuine and helpful reply, but are still getting negative responses, it may be time to ignore them. Although this isn’t the ideal solution, there's no point in fueling the fire and if you’ve done your best to satisfy them, other customers will also look past this negativity. 8. Make changes Instead of just fighting fires, make some positive changes. Although you may see a negative comment as a failure, see it has helpful feedback, which you can use to improve your business. Make a note of any negative comments that you receive and ensure you feed them back into the business. This way they can be actioned so you shouldn’t see these specific complaints in the future.
Main image via Joe the Goat Farmer/Flickr
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 5
Pokemon GO servers went down and a communication crisis erupted. By Franco Veltri To the dismay of the millions of Pokemon GO addicts, Nintendo-Niantic confirmed on July 16, that the servers for the game that’s taking the world by storm were indeed down. Gamer community group Pokemon GO News reported a few hours later that Nintendo’s servers were up and running, though service might be sluggish for some users. A communication crisis was suddenly in progress as users where lost in their battle to understand what was happening! A hacking group claimed responsibility for taking down the Pokémon Go servers using a DDOS attack. This problem, however, involved not just the players but also the many marketing initiatives built around the game. You probably know that Pokemon GO is a simple, attractive game that is creating addiction. Worse than Candy Crush! Pokémon GO has been installed hundreds of millions of times since launch in early July and is played in more than 100 countries around the world. It basically consists in a free App that requires you to walk around looking at the world through your smartphone until you see a Pokemon, and then you try to catch it. You create an avatar that moves around by following your phone’s GPS coordinates, allowing you to see where you are like you would on a Google Map. The growing popularity immediately had economic consequences. The game became part of social media, as it now includes a very simple chat option. It is also being exploited for marketing purposes. Here is a great example: The Houston Zoo uses Pokemon Go to get visitors in the gates at the zoo by posting on their Facebook page the number of Pokéstops available at the zoo. Several hotels pretend to host Pokemons... A portable device called the Pokémon GO Plus enables Pokémon GO players to enjoy the game even while they’re not looking at their smartphones. The device connects to a smartphone via Bluetooth and notifies the player about events in the game—such as the appearance of a Pokémon nearby—using LED and vibration. News media is contributing to this phenomenon by mainly reporting on the associated risks. Many people have had accidents because being distracted by the game, or entered prohibited areas. “Death by Pokemon is coming,” as people use the program while walking, biking, driving, etc.” Business is business and - as long as the game remains popular, you may think about using it to help your PR campaign... But you can do it only if you trust the reliability of the game. Gamers are used to outages. But Nintendo-Niantic was clearly unprepared to deal with the outage in a timely manner. An article in Lore Hound noted: “Now that it’s happened everyone, players, analysts and some casually interested parties, are wondering what’s going on? How is Pokemon Go going to continue its trajectory? Why wouldn’t a business discuss this, you ask? There’s two likely
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 6
reasons. First, the company may not be well versed in your average crisis management. After all, Niantic Labs spun off of Google as one of its more adventurous endeavors, never a core line of business. Let’s not kid ourselves, this is nothing short of a crisis. Continued server problems, especially while roll outs persist, piss off current players and kill engagement for newcomers. Both horrendous outcomes to the game and its bottom line. Second, Niantic Labs currently lacks the resources to get ahead of the problem, server and communication wise. “ It was only with a blog post, dated 29 September, that Niantic fully explained what happened: “The Cloud Datastore service that we were utilizing was soon running at more than fifty times our original projections. Player demand ultimately spiked by more than an order of magnitude, ten times our most aggressive estimates, requiring hot fixes and ongoing game changes against a backdrop of massive growth in players. With Google Cloud product and engineering teams at our side as consultative partners, Niantic was able to overcome the rush of millions of enthusiastic Trainers and stabilize the service. Engineering teams from both companies began working hand-in-hand around the clock the moment it became clear that the game’s popularity would exceed our wildest estimates. More than a dozen teams across Cloud Platform and other core Google products rallied to support us as we pushed live improvements to the game for our players. In parallel, Google’s infrastructure teams worked to tune systems, ensuring sufficient capacity for us to keep up with the game’s skyrocketing popularity.” Next time they will do better…
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 7
Bill Clinton’s Elegant Love Letter To Hillary Was Sly And Effective It takes a brilliant orator to write a love letter to a woman he's managed to dishonor in the most humiliating way. There's only one person who could pull it off: Bill Clinton. And he did. By Matthew Cooper
Decades later, it’s hard to remember how battered Bill Clinton was after the 1992 primaries. He had secured the nomination, but his candidacy was marred by his efforts to avoid serving in Vietnam and allegations, later confirmed, of extramarital affairs. It looked like he was heading for a joyless convention in New York. But events conspired to make it work. Ross Perot ended his presidential bid, for a short time, saying a “re-energized” Democratic Party meant he could leave the race. And Clinton’s selection of Al Gore as his vice president—a triumph of amplification over diversification (two 40-something Southerners from adjacent states)—had propelled his poll ratings. The convention featured impressive keynotes from the regal Representative Barbara Jordan, a then liberal Democratic governor from Georgia named Zell Miller and a basketball star turned senator, Bill Bradley. Now, two decades later, we have another convention, another battered Clinton candidacy. Only this time it’s Hillary Clinton, the controversial senator and secretary of state, who is stuck in a close race with Donald Trump. This convention is unlikely to be equally transformative, but it could help her inch ahead of a reality star she ought to be beating more handily.
Click on the photo to watch the video
The former president began by tossing out the aw-shucks anecdotes about meeting Hillary Rodham at Yale Law School. They’re well known to Clinton watchers but still new to millennials, especially young progressives who think the first couple are nothing more than an eye-rolling tangle of pathologies, humiliating affairs and Wall Street honoraria. Every marriage is a mystery, even to those in the middle of it. But by recalling the first time they locked eyes at Yale and his visit to her Bears- and Cubs-crazed family in the suburbs of Chicago, he made it a bit less opaque. He chronicled their nearly 50-year conversation, as Sidney Blumenthal Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it
8
dubbed it, about how to achieve liberal goals in a conservative country. “She took a huge chance,” he said of Hillary Clinton accepting a job teaching law in Arkansas. “It was more rural, more culturally conservative than any place she had ever been.” By telling her story, he bolstered her character and liberal bona fides to a skeptical Democratic audience in the Wells Fargo Center and at home. Among other things, he chronicled her work on criminal justice reform, her efforts to register Mexican-American voters, the year she spent after law school at the Yale Child Study Center and her interest in the legal rights of disabled children. Throughout the night, Bill Clinton accomplished three main things: He reminded the audience that Hillary Clinton was a young idealist. He made some sense of their marriage, perhaps the most analyzed in the world. And he rehabilitated himself, explaining his progressive history to a crowd that only knows him from the Defense of Marriage Act and the deregulation of derivatives. “I was defeated in the Reagan landslide,” he recalled of his 1980 bid for a second term as Arkansas’s governor. At 34, he’d gone from being the nation’s youngest governor to the nation’s youngest ex-governor. Above all, Bill Clinton's speech was a love letter to his wife, though at times a corny one. “I married my best friend,” he said, which seemed like a strange line to fill the arena. And let's not forget, this is a man who received oral sex from an intern in the Oval Office, then lied to his wife about it, as well as the country. And yet there is a reason they wound up together, and that resonated on Tuesday. It would have been easier for them to go another route. An aspiring Arkansas politician would have been better off with a Little Rock beauty queen, not a smart, young lawyer from Illinois. She’d have been better off somewhere else too. Someplace more liberal, more hip. But they found each other, stayed together, and as weird as their marriage is, it does make some sense. Each thinks the other is the smartest person in the world. The respect is real, even if it’s marred by contempt worthy of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. “She’s the best darn changemaker I’ve met in my entire life,” Bill Clinton said. As he spoke about her service as first lady, along with her time in the Senate and at the State Department, “change-maker” signs popped up in the audience. “She always wants to move the ball forward. That’s just who she is,” he said. When he cited her importing an Israeli preschool program to Arkansas or working with Republican Tom DeLay to make adoption easier, he was perhaps overstating his case, but only up to a point. When Hillary Clinton took up the cause of adoption with DeLay, it was a major moment. As House majority leader, the Texan had been a leader of the effort to impeach Bill Clinton and was reviled by Democrats. By putting that aside, the former president said, Hillary Clinton “honored him as an adoptive parent” and came up with a law that made it easier for not only unwanted newborns to find a home but also older foster kids, who are much harder to place. Bill Clinton punctuated the account of their lives with sly, political moves. He likened President Barack Obama’s courtship of Hillary Clinton to become secretary of state to his multiple attempts to get her to marry him. It was a savvy way of mentioning a president the crowd mostly adores. It also seemed to underscore her rare talents are recognized by other discerning eyes. Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 9
If Bill Clinton’s remarks sound like a standard bio speech, gussied up by a great orator, recall that most conventions that nominate a senator or former senator spend little time on their congressional career. John Kerry, for instance, lingered on his experience in Vietnam in his 2004 acceptance speech, skipping over his decades in Congress. But Bill Clinton’s speech called considerable attention to Hillary Clinton’s years in Congress and the time she spent crafting policy and serving on the Armed Services Committee. It sounds wonky, but it was effective—it made her wonkiness appealing. “Nobody who has dealt seriously with our men and women in the military thinks they’re a disaster,” he said, dinging Trump. “They are a national treasure.” Reinventing government was one of Gore’s top projects during his time as vice president in the 1990s. But Bill Clinton’s speech idolized Hillary Clinton as a leader who wants to make government work and knows how to do it. Republicans attack her, he told the audience, because she knows how to deliver public services, and that scares them. They’ve reduced her to “a cartoon,” conjuring up a fabricated and demonized version of her, which bears little resemblance to reality. “One is real. The other is made up," he said. "You just have to decide which is which. [But] today, you nominated the real one.” In an elegiac tone, recalling the decades of their lives together, he skipped the sordid parts of their history, brushing it a side with a simple line: “She’ll never quit on you." The decision to omit an explicit discussion of their marital woes echoes a debate among staffers in Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign. Should she do a big speech explaining her marriage, explaining why she stayed with him? The decision back then and tonight, arguably a good one, was to accentuate the positive. It takes a brilliant orator to write a love letter to a woman he’s managed to dishonor in the most humiliating way. There’s only one person who could pull it off: Bill Clinton. And he did. ================= Full transcript: “”In the spring of 1971 I met a girl. (LAUGHTER) (APPLAUSE) The first time I saw her we were, appropriately enough, in a class on political and civil rights. She had thick blond hair, big glasses, wore no makeup, and she had a sense of strength and self- possession that I found magnetic. After the class I followed her out, intending to introduce myself. I got close enough to touch her back, but I couldn’t do it. Somehow I knew this would not be just another tap on the shoulder, that I might be starting something I couldn’t stop. And I saw her several more times in the next few days, but I still didn’t speak to her. Then one night I was in the law library talking to a classmate who wanted me to join the Yale Law Journal. He said it would guarantee me a job in a big firm or a clerkship with a federal judge. I really wasn’t interested, I just wanted to go home to Arkansas. (APPLAUSE) Then I saw the girl again, standing at the opposite end of that long room. Finally she was staring back at me, so I watched her. She closed her book, put it down and started walking toward me. She walked the whole length of the library, came up to me and said, look, if you’re going to keep staring at me… (LAUGHTER)
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 10
CLINTON: …and now I’m staring back, we at least ought to know each other’s name. I’m Hillary Rodham, who are you? (APPLAUSE) I was so impressed and surprised that, whether you believe it or not, momentarily I was speechless. (LAUGHTER)(APPLAUSE) Finally, I sort of blurted out my name and we exchanged a few words and then she went away. Well, I didn’t join the Law Review, but I did leave that library with a whole new goal in mind. (LAUGHTER) A couple of days later, I saw her again. I remember, she was wearing a long, white, flowery skirt. And I went up to her and she said she was going to register for classes for the next term. And I said I’d go, too. And we stood in line and talked — you had to do that to register back then — and I thought I was doing pretty well until we got to the front of the line and the registrar looked up and said, Bill, what are you doing here, you registered morning? (LAUGHTER) I turned red and she laughed that big laugh of hers. And I thought, well, heck, since my cover’s been blown I just went ahead and asked her to take a walk down to the art museum. We’ve been walking and talking and laughing together ever since. (APPLAUSE) And we’ve done it in good times and bad, through joy and heartbreak. We cried together this morning on the news that our good friend and a lot of your good friend, Mark Weiner, passed away early this morning. We’ve built up a lifetime of memories. After the first month and that first walk, I actually drove her home to Park Ridge, Illinois… (APPLAUSE) …to meet her family and see the town where she grew up, a perfect example of post-World War II middle-class America, street after street of nice houses, great schools, good parks, a big public swimming pool, and almost all white. I really liked her family. Her crusty, conservative father, her rambunctious brothers, all extolling the virtues of rooting for the Bears and the Cuba. (APPLAUSE) And for the people from Illinois here, they even told me what “waiting for next year” meant. (LAUGHTER) It could be next year, guys. Now, her mother was different. She was more liberal than the boys. And she had a childhood that made mine look like a piece of cake. She was easy to underestimate with her soft manner and she reminded me all over again of the truth of that old saying you should never judge a book by its covers. Knowing her was one of the greatest gifts Hillary ever gave me. (APPLAUSE) I learned that Hillary got her introduction to social justice through her Methodist youth minister, Don Jones. He took her downtown to Chicago to hear Dr. Martin Luther King speak and he remained her friend for the rest of his life. This will be the only campaign of hers he ever missed. When she got to college, her support for civil rights, her opposition to the Vietnam War compelled her to change party, to become a Democrat. (APPLAUSE)
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 11
And then between college and law school on a total lark she went alone to Alaska and spent some time sliming fish. (APPLAUSE) More to the point, by the time I met her she had already been involved in the law school’s legal services project and she had been influenced by Marian Wright Edelman. (APPLAUSE) She took a summer internship interviewing workers in migrant camps for Senator Walter Mondale’s subcommittee. (APPLAUSE) She had also begun working in the Yale New Haven Hospital to develop procedures to handle suspected child abuse cases. She got so involved in children’s issues that she actually took an extra year in law school working at the child studies center to learn what more could be done to improve the lives and the futures of poor children. (APPLAUSE) So she was already determined to figure out how to make things better. Hillary opened my eyes to a whole new world of public service by private citizens. In the summer of 1972, she went to Dothan, Alabama to visit one of those segregated academies that then enrolled over half-a-million white kids in the South. The only way the economics worked is if they claimed federal tax exemptions to which they were not legally entitled. She got sent to prove they weren’t. So she sauntered into one of these academies all by herself, pretending to be a housewife that had just moved to town and needed to find a school for her son. And they exchanged pleasantries and finally she said, look, let’s just get to the bottom line here, if I enroll my son in this school will he be in a segregated school, yes or know? And the guy said absolutely. She had him! (LAUGHTER) I’ve seen it a thousand times since. And she went back and her encounter was part of a report that gave Marian Marian Wright Edelman the ammunition she needed to keep working to force the Nixon administration to take those tax exemptions away and give our kids access to an equal education. (APPLAUSE) Then she went down to south Texas where she met… (APPLAUSE) …she met one of the nicest fellows I ever met, the wonderful union leader Franklin Garcia, and he helped her register Mexican- American voters. I think some of them are still around to vote for her in 2016. (APPLAUSE) Then in our last year in law school, Hillary kept up this work. She went to South Carolina to see why so many young… (APPLAUSE) …she went to South Carolina to see why so many young African- American boys, I mean, young teenagers, were being jailed for years with adults in men’s prisons. And she filed a report on that, which led to some changes, too. Always making things better. (APPLAUSE) Now, meanwhile, let’s get back to business. I was trying to convince her to marry me. (LAUGHTER) I first proposed to her on a trip to Great Britain, the first time she had been overseas. And we were on the shoreline of this wonderful little lake, Lake Ennerdale. I asked her to marry me and she said I can’t do it. (LAUGHTER) So in 1974 I went home to teach in the law school and Hillary moved to Massachusetts… (APPLAUSE) …to keep working on children’s issues. This time trying to figure out why so many kids counted in the Census weren’t enrolled in school. She found one of them sitting alone on her porch in a wheelchair.
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 12
Once more, she filed a report about these kids, and that helped influence ultimately the Congress to adopt the proposition that children with disabilities, physical or otherwise, should have equal access to public education. (APPLAUSE) You saw the results of that last night when Anastasia Somoza talked. (APPLAUSE) She never made fun of people with disabilities; she tried to empower them based on their abilities. (APPLAUSE) Meanwhile, I was still trying to get her to marry me. (LAUGHTER) So the second time I tried a different tack. I said I really want you to marry me, but you shouldn’t do it. (LAUGHTER) And she smiled and looked at me, like, what is this boy up to? She said that is not a very good sales pitch. I said I know, but it’s true. And I meant it, it was true. I said I know most of the young Democrats our age who want to go into politics, they mean well and they speak well, but none of them is as good as you are at actually doing things to make positive changes in people’s lives. (APPLAUSE) So I suggested she go home to Illinois or move to New York and look for a chance to run for office. She just laughed and said, are you out of you mind, nobody would ever vote for me. (LAUGHTER) So I finally got her to visit me in Arkansas. (APPLAUSE) CLINTON: And when she did, the people at the law school were so impressed they offered a teaching position. And she decided to take a huge chance. She moved to a strange place, more rural, more culturally conservative than anyplace she had ever been, where she knew good and well people would wonder what in the world she was like and whether they could or should accept her. Didn’t take them long to find out what she was like. She loved her teaching and she got frustrated when one of her students said, well, what do you expect, I’m just from Arkansas. She said, don’t tell me that, you’re as smart as anybody, you’ve just got to believe in yourself and work hard and set high goals. She believed that anybody could make it. (APPLAUSE) She also started the first legal aid clinic in northwest Arkansas, providing legal aid services to poor people who couldn’t pay for them. And one day I was driving her to the airport to fly back to Chicago when we passed this little brick house that had a for sale sign on it. And she said, boy, that’s a pretty house. It had 1,100 square feet, an attic, fan and no air conditioner in hot Arkansas, and a screened-in porch. Hillary commented on what a uniquely designed and beautiful house it was. So I took a big chance. I bought the house. My mortgage was $175 a month. (LAUGHTER) When she came back, I picked up her up and I said, you remember that house you liked? She said yeah. I said, while you were gone I bought it, you have to marry me now. (LAUGHTER) The third time was the charm. (APPLAUSE) We were married in that little house on October the 11th, 1975. I married my best friend. I was still in awe after more than four years of being around her at how smart and strong and loving and caring she was. And I really hoped that her choosing me and rejecting my advice to pursue her own career was a decision she would never regret.
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 13
A little over a year later we moved to Little Rock when I became attorney general and she joined the oldest law firm west of the Mississippi. Soon after, she started a group called the Arkansas Advocates for Families and Children. (CHEERS) It’s a group, as you can hear, is still active today. (APPLAUSE) In 1979, just after I became governor, I asked Hillary to chair a rural health committee to help expand health care to isolated farm and mountain areas. They recommended to do that partly by deploying trained nurse practitioners in places with no doctors to provide primary care they were trained to provide. It was a big deal then, highly controversial and very important. And I got the feeling that what she did for the rest of her life she was doing there. She just went out and figured out what needed to be done and what made the most sense and what would help the most people. And then if it was controversial she’d just try to persuade people it was the right thing to do. (APPLAUSE) It wasn’t the only big thing that happened that spring my first year as governor. We found out we were going to be parents. (APPLAUSE) And time passed. On February 27th, 1980, 15 minutes after I got home from the National Governors Conference in Washington, Hillary’s water broke and off we went to the hospital. Chelsea was born just before midnight. (APPLAUSE) And it was the greatest moment of my life. The miracle of a new beginning. The hole it filled for me because my own father died before I was born, and the absolute conviction that my daughter had the best mother in the whole world. (APPLAUSE) For the next 17 years, through nursing school, Montessori, kindergarten, through T-ball, softball, soccer, volleyball and her passion for ballet, through sleepovers, summer camps, family vacations and Chelsea’s own very ambitious excursions, from Halloween parties in the neighbourhood, to a Viennese waltz gala in the White House, Hillary first and foremost was a mother. She became, as she often said, our family’s designated worrier, born with an extra responsibility gene. The truth is we rarely disagreed on parenting, although she did believe that I had gone a little over the top when I took a couple of days off with Chelsea to watch all six “Police Academy” movies back-toback. (LAUGHTER) When Chelsea was 9 months old, I was defeated for re-election in the Reagan landslide. And I became overnight, I think, the youngest former governor in the history of the country. We only had two-year terms back then. Hillary was great. Immediately she said, OK, what are we going to do? Here’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to get a house, you’re going to get a job, we’re going to enjoy being Chelsea’s parents. And if you really want to run again, you’ve got to go out and talk to people and figure out why you lost, tell people you got the message and show them you’ve still got good ideas. I followed her advice. Within two days we had a house, I soon had a job. We had two fabulous years with Chelsea. And in 1982, I became the first governor in the history of our state to be elected, defeated and elected again. (APPLAUSE) I think my experience is it’s a pretty good thing to follow her advice. The rest of the decade sort of flew by as our lives settled into a rhythm of family and work and friends. Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 14
In 1983, Hillary chaired a committee to recommend new education standards for us as a part of and in response to a court order to equalize school funding and a report by a national expert that said our woefully underfunded schools were the worst in America. Typical Hillary, she held listening tours in all 75 counties with our committee. She came up with really ambitious recommendations. For example, that we be the first state in America to require elementary counselors in every school because so many kids were having trouble at home and they needed it. (APPLAUSE) So I called the legislature into session hoping to pass the standards, pass a pay raise for teachers and raise the sales tax to pay for it all. I knew it would be hard to pass, but it got easier after Hillary testified before the education committee and the chairman, a plainspoken farmer, said looks to me like we elected the wrong Clinton. (LAUGHTER)(APPLAUSE) Well, by the time I ran for president nine years later, the same expert who said that we had the worst schools in America said that our state was one of the two most improved states in America. And that’s because of those standards that Hillary developed. (APPLAUSE) Now, two years later, Hillary told me about a preschool program developed in Israel called HIPPY, Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters. The idea was to teach low-income parents, even those that couldn’t read, to be their children’s first teachers. She said she thought it would work in Arkansas. I said that’s great, what are we going to do about it? She said, oh, I already did it. I called the woman who started the program in Israel, she’ll be here in about 10 days and help us get started. Next thing you know I’m being dragged around to all these little preschool graduations. Now, keep in mind, this was before any state even had universal kindergarten and I’m being dragged to preschool graduations watching these poor parents with tears in their eyes because they never thought they’d be able to help their kids learn. (APPLAUSE) Now, 20 years of research has shown how well this program works to improve readiness for school and academic achievement. There are a lot of young adults in America who have no idea Hillary had anything to do with it who are enjoying better lives because they were in that program. CLINTON: She did all this while being a full-time worker, a mother and enjoying our life. Why? Well, she’s insatiably curious, she’s a natural leader, she’s a good organizer, and she’s the best darn changemaker I ever met in my entire life. (APPLAUSE) Look, this is a really important point. This is a really important point for you to take out of this convention. If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people’s lives are better, you know it’s hard and some people think it’s boring. Speeches like this are fun. (LAUGHTER) Actually doing the work is hard. So people say, well, we need to change. She’s been around a long time, she sure has, and she’s sure been worth every single year she’s put into making people’s lives better. (APPLAUSE) I can tell you this. If you were sitting where I’m sitting and you heard what I have heard at every dinner conversation, every lunch conversation, on every lone walk, you would say this woman has never been satisfied with the status quo in anything. She always wants to move the ball forward. That is just who she is. (APPLAUSE)
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 15
When I became president with a commitment to reform health care, Hillary was a natural to head the health care task force. You all know we failed because we couldn’t break a Senate filibuster. Hillary immediately went to work on solving the problems the bill sought to address one by one. The most important goal was to get more children with health insurance. (APPLAUSE) In 1997, Congress passed the Children’s Health Insurance Program, still an important part of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. It insures more than 8 million kids. There are a lot of other things in that bill that she got done piece by piece, pushing that rock up the hill. In 1997, she also teamed with the House Minority Leader Tom DeLay, who maybe disliked me more than any of Newt Gingrich’s crowd. They worked on a bill together to increase adoptions of children under foster care. She wanted to do it because she knew that Tom DeLay, for all of our differences, was an adoptive parent and she honored him for doing that. (APPLAUSE) Now, the bill they worked on, which passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, led to a big increase in the adoption of children out of foster care, including non-infant kids and special-needs kids. It made life better because she’s a change-maker, that’s what she does. (APPLAUSE) Now, when you’re doing all this, real life doesn’t stop. 1997 was the year Chelsea finished high school and went to college. We were happy for her, but sad for us to see her go. I’ll never forget moving her into her dorm room at Stanford. It would have been a great little reality flick. There I was in a trance just staring out the window trying not to cry, and there was Hillary on her hands and knees desperately looking for one more drawer to put that liner paper in. (LAUGHTER) Finally, Chelsea took charge and told us ever so gently that it was time for us to go. So we closed a big chapter in the most important work of our lives. As you’ll see Thursday night when Chelsea speaks, Hillary’s done a pretty fine job of being a mother. (APPLAUSE) And as you saw last night, beyond a shadow of a doubt so has Michelle Obama. (APPLAUSE) Now, fast forward. In 1999, Congressman Charlie Rangel and other New York Democrats urged Hillary… (APPLAUSE) …urged Hillary to run for the seat of retiring Senator Pat Moynihan. We had always intended to go to New York after I left office and commute to Arkansas, but this had never occurred to either one of us. Hillary had never run for office before, but she decided to give it a try. She began her campaign the way she always does new things, by listening and and learning. And after a tough battle, New York elected her to the seat once held by another outsider, Robert Kennedy. (APPLAUSE) And she didn’t let him down. Her early years were dominated by 9/11, by working to fund the recovery, then monitoring the health and providing compensation to victims and first and second responders. She and Senator Schumer were tireless and so were our House members. In 2003, partly spurred on by what we were going through, she became the first senator in the history of New York ever to serve on the Armed Services Committee. (APPLAUSE) So she tried to make sure people on the battlefield had proper equipment. She tried to expand and did expand health care coverage to Reservists and members of the National Guard. She got longer family leave, working with Senator Dodd, for people caring for wounded service members.
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 16
And she worked for more extensive care for people with traumatic brain injury. She also served on a special Pentagon commission to propose changes necessary to meet our new security challenges. Newt Gingrich was on that commission, he told me what a good job she had done. (APPLAUSE) I say that because nobody who has seriously dealt with the men and women in today’s military believes they are a disaster. They are a national treasure of all races, all religions, all walks of life. (APPLAUSE) Now, meanwhile, she compiled a really solid record, totally progressive on economic and social issues. She voted for and against some proposed trade deals. She became the de facto economic development officer for the area of New York outside the ambit of New York City. She worked for farmers, for winemakers, for small businesses and manufacturers, for upstate cities in rural areas who needed more ideas and more new investment to create good jobs, something we have to do again in small-town and rural America, in neighbourhoods that have been left behind in our cities and Indian country and, yes, in coal country. (APPLAUSE) When she lost a hard-fought contest to President Obama in 2008, she worked for his election hard. But she hesitated to say yes when he asked her to join his Cabinet because she so loved being a senator from New York. So like me, in a different context, he had to keep asking. (LAUGHTER) But as we all saw and heard from Madeleine Albright, it was worth the effort and worth the wait. (APPLAUSE) As secretary of state, she worked hard to get strong sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program. And in what The Wall Street Journal no less called a half-court shot at the buzzer, she got Russia and China to support them. Her team negotiated the New START Treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons and re-establish inspections. And she got enough Republican support to get twothirds of the Senate, the vote necessary to ratify the treaty. (APPLAUSE) She flew all night long from Cambodia to the Middle East to get a cease-fire that would avoid a full-out shooting war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza to protect the peace of the region. She backed President Obama’s decision to go after Osama bin Laden. (APPLAUSE) She launched a team, this is really important today, she launched a team to fight back against terrorists online and built a new global counterterrorism effort. We’ve got to win this battle in the mind field. She put climate change at the center of our foreign policy. (APPLAUSE) She negotiated the first agreement ever — ever — where China and India officially committed to reduce their emissions. And as she had been doing since she went to Beijing in 1995 and said women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights… (APPLAUSE) …she worked to empower women and girls around the world and to make the same exact declaration on behalf of the LGBT community in America and around the world. (APPLAUSE) And nobody ever talks about this much, nobody ever talks about this much, but it’s important to me. She tripled the number of people with AIDS in poor countries whose lives are being saved with your tax dollars, most of them in Africa, going from 1.7 million lives to 5.1 million lives and it didn’t cost you
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 17
any more money. She just bought available FDA-approved generic drugs, something we need to do for the American people more. (APPLAUSE) Now, you don’t know any of these people. You don’t know any of those 3.4 million people, but I’ll guarantee you they know you. They know you because they see you as thinking their lives matter. They know you and that’s one reason the approval of the United States was 20 points higher when she left the secretary of state’s office than when she took it. (APPLAUSE) CLINTON: Now, how does this square? How did this square with the things that you heard at the Republican convention? What’s the difference in what I told you and what they said? How do you square it? You can’t. One is real, the other is made up. You just have to decide. You just have to decide which is which, my fellow Americans. The real one had done more positive change-making before she was 30 than many public officials do in a lifetime in office. (APPLAUSE) The real one, if you saw her friend Betsy Ebeling vote for Illinois today… (APPLAUSE) …has friends from childhood through Arkansas, where she has not lived in more than 20 years, who have gone all across America at their own expense to fight for the person they know. (APPLAUSE) The real one has earned the loyalty, the respect and the fervent support of people who have worked with her in every stage of her life, including leaders around the world who know her to be able, straightforward and completely trustworthy. The real one calls you when you’re sick, when your kid’s in trouble or when there’s a death in the family. The real one repeatedly drew praise from prominent Republicans when she was a senator and secretary of state. (APPLAUSE) So what’s up with it? Well, if you win elections on the theory that government is always bad and will mess up a two-car parade… (LAUGHTER) …a real change-maker represents a real threat. (APPLAUSE) So your only option is to create a cartoon, a cartoon alternative, then run against the cartoon. Cartoons are two- dimensional, they’re easy to absorb. Life in the real world is complicated and real change is hard. And a lot of people even think it’s boring. (APPLAUSE) Good for you, because earlier today you nominated the real one. (APPLAUSE) Listen, we’ve got to get back on schedule. You guys calm down. Look (INAUDIBLE) a long, full, blessed life, it really took off when I met and fell in love with that girl in the spring of 1971. When I was president, I worked hard to give you more peace and shared prosperity, to give you an America where nobody is invisible or counted out. (APPLAUSE) But for this time, Hillary is uniquely qualified to seize the opportunities and reduce the risks we face. And she is still the best darn change-maker I have ever known. (APPLAUSE) You could drop her into any trouble spot, pick one, come back in a month and somehow, some way she will have made it better. That is just who she is. (APPLAUSE)
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 18
There are clear, achievable, affordable responses to our challenges. But we won’t get to them if America makes the wrong choice in this election. That’s why you should elect her. And you should elect her because she’ll never quit when the going gets tough. She’ll never quit on you. She sent me in this primary to West Virginia where she knew we were going to lose, to look those coal miners in the eye and say I’m down here because Hillary sent me to tell you that if you really think you can get the economy back you had 50 years ago, have at it, vote for whoever you want to. But if she wins, she is coming back for you to take you along on the ride to America’s future. (APPLAUSE) And so I say to you, if you love this country, you’re working hard, you’re paying taxes and you’re obeying the law and you’d like to become a citizen, you should choose immigration reform over somebody that wants to send you back. (APPLAUSE) If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together. We want you. (APPLAUSE) If you’re a young African American disillusioned and afraid, we saw in Dallas how great our police officers can be, help us build a future where nobody is afraid to walk outside, including the people that wear blue to protect our future. (APPLAUSE) Hillary will make us stronger together. You know it because she’s spent a lifetime doing it. I hope you will do it. I hope you will elect her. Those of us who have more yesterdays than tomorrows tend to care more about our children and grandchildren. The reason you should elect her is that in the greatest country on earth we have always been about tomorrow. You children and grandchildren will bless you forever if you do. God bless you. Thank you.
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 19
The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People HABIT 5: Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood From a book by Stephen R. Covey
Communication is the most important skill in life. You spend years learning how to read and write, and years learning how to speak. But what about listening? What training have you had that enables you to listen so you really, deeply understand another human being? Probably none, right? If you're like most people, you probably seek first to be understood; you want to get your point across. And in doing so, you may ignore the other person completely, pretend that you're listening, selectively hear only certain parts of the conversation or attentively focus on only the words being said, but miss the meaning entirely. So why does this happen? Because most people listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. You listen to yourself as you prepare in your mind what you are going to say, the questions you are going to ask, etc. You filter everything you hear through your life experiences, your frame of reference. You check what you hear against your autobiography and see how it measures up. And consequently, you decide prematurely what the other person means before he/she finishes communicating. Do any of the following sound familiar? "Oh, I know just how you feel. I felt the same way." "I had that same thing happen to me." "Let me tell you what I did in a similar situation." Because you so often listen autobiographically, you tend to respond in one of four ways:
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 20
Evaluating:
You judge and then either agree or disagree.
Probing:
You ask questions from your own frame of reference.
Advising:
You give counsel, advice, and solutions to problems.
Interpreting: You analyze others' motives and behaviors based on your own experiences. You might be saying, "Hey, now wait a minute. I'm just trying to relate to the person by drawing on my own experiences. Is that so bad?" In some situations, autobiographical responses may be appropriate, such as when another person specifically asks for help from your point of view or when there is already a very high level of trust in the relationship.
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 21
Social Media in the Military: Opportunities, Perils and a Safe Middle Path by Brigadier Mick Ryan, AM and Brigadier Marcus Thompson, AM Knowledge is generated anew from connections that weren’t there before. Margaret Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science
Introduction Social media has revolutionised global communication and professional discourse. It has demonstrated a capacity for penetration that is historically unprecedented, especially compared to other means of communication. For example Facebook took just 12 years to gain 1.65 billion users globally and Twitter has gained over 300 million users in a decade. Social media are distinct from other forms of media primarily because of two key reasons. First, they are more viral; users are more likely to share content in their social networks. Second, social media users are highly mobile. Social networking has a very high penetration of Australian society. In June 2016, there were 15 million Facebook, 5 million Instagram and 2.8 million Twitter users in Australia.[i] Members of the Australian Army are no different to other members of Australian society. They have largely embraced the various forms of social media available to them, and they use it to communicate at home, on courses, in the field and on operations. The story of social media is one of opportunity and threat for members of the military. It offers a level of transparency and global interaction that has not been possible before. But is also presents potential threats to our people, units and operations that can materialise without clever, informed use of the various social media available. This paper reviews the rationale for the use of social media in the military. It does so by examining the benefits and the risks of social media use – by Army’s people, and the institution. The paper then provides an analysis of the most appropriate and effective use of social media, ensuring that individuals, units and commanders are able to exploit this most modern of communication forms in a way that is informed yet interesting, and protects essential friendly information. Why the Military Should Use Social Media In a recent article on the Strategy Bridge website on the lessons from employing social media in the military, Brigadier Mick Ryan described the lessons from employing social media in a single combat brigade within the Australian Army. Collectively, many lessons were learned over a year of implementing this enhanced approach to communicating with a range of different audiences. But how might this approach ‘scale up’? That is, how can military leaders institutionalise the use of social media for the variety of ‘raise, train, sustain’ functions that Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 22
are executed on a daily basis? This is not to say that military organisations don’t have a social media presence; they do. In the Australian context, the Army Facebook page has a following nearly ten times the size of the regular Army. The Twitter feed, while having a smaller presence, at least has established a foothold for Army in the ‘Twittersphere’. But presence is not the same as an institution fully exploiting the potential of social media. It is therefore worth examining the opportunities of organisational adoption of social media, and the areas where it is most likely to have a good return on the time and people invested in generating social media product, presence and discourse. And, if military institutions are to fully realise the potential of social media, it will need all leaders from top to bottom of the Services to embrace and advocate its use. Therefore, below are seven reasons why military leaders should embrace and advocate for the institutional adoption of social media. 1. Social media is a great way to understand, connect and interact with a global community of military professionals; many of whom are eager to engage in professional discourse and debate. Unlike email and journals, social media is open to a global audience at all times, and access is open to all. It permits leaders to gain an understanding of topical issues and challenges as a tripwire to great web content. It also permits leaders to understand the breadth of views and opinions among military professionals and to engage in debate. Initiatives such as @DEFConference have brought together young professional military personnel. It has spawned websites, and social media feeds, that enhance the breadth, and further democratised, professional military discourse. 2. Social media is a useful mechanism to break through the generational strata and for leaders to engage their entire workforce. It is one means that Generation X leaders can engage, interact with, and understand their Generation Y work forces, which are now the vast majority of military organisations. Generation Xers cannot fully appreciate how to best lead the Generation Y service personnel without understanding social media. Persisting only with older forms of communication, without embracing new and relevant means, is like refusing to use telephones a century ago. 3. Social media is another means to foster and improve transparency in military organisations. Both transparency and auditability are core responsibilities of military organisations in democratic nations. Cleverly employed, and maintaining operational security constraints, it provides timely insights into the daily workings of military organisations or a broad distribution of key initiatives. Social media should also be used as a part of a broader public affairs and strategic communications approach, and complement existing public affairs mechanisms. 4. Social media provides an additional layer of understanding for military families, and enhances their capacity to visualise the challenges and achievements of their relatives. In the case of Army units and schools, Facebook pages have been very popular with families and members of the public. Providing information on the activities of service members to their families assists in family comprehension of the contribution of their family members’ service and does so in an easily accessible and easily understood way. This is especially the case for deployed family members but is relevant for all service personnel regardless of their employment location. 5. Social media adds to the range of tools for military leaders to recognise achievement by their people. Most military organisations have multiple ways to acknowledge achievement, courage and service through medals, ribbons, Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 23
commendations, etc. However social media offers the capacity to publicise these traditional achievement recognition approaches. It also can be employed as an additional way to acknowledge achievement through rapid posts that acknowledge individuals and groups. 6. Social media can also be employed for rapidly sharing lessons. The Internet was a critical enabler for sharing operational lessons from both Iraq and Afghanistan, and for fostering debate on the range of responses available during particularly challenging periods of those campaigns. Social media played a role in this sharing of lessons, but could potentially offer a larger contribution if senior leaders openly use and advocate its use in this way. 7. Finally, social media holds potential to be used as an integral part in new digital age education, training and doctrine systems. Several academics have examined the application of social media in education and training. There is still some way to go in examining the opportunities and challenges of social media in these areas. However, it is clear that digital age training, education and doctrine development – which uses a mix of residential and non-residential approaches – must exploit the most effective means of communication available. Social media therefore must be part of this ‘golf bag’ of available approaches for interaction and debate in any evolution of how the military trains and educates its people and develops its doctrine. Some have found the challenges of social media, particularly security concerns or misunderstanding its value, difficult to surmount or to be sufficient cause to lag behind in adopting its use. For military organisations, social media must now move beyond the discretionary and into the realm of business as usual. In the absence of face-to-face interaction, social media is one of the most powerful ways for leaders to pass information, broadly convey intent, and for all of us to communicate, interact and foster professional sharing and discourse. But that is not to say that there are not some negative aspects; there are. As the following section of the paper describes, there are perils in the employment of social media which members of the military – and military institutions – must appreciate. The Perils of Using Social Media War is tough. It’s tougher if you’re stupid. John Wayne
The key strength of social media described above, principally its ‘global audience’, ‘open access’ and ability to rapidly share information is also its Achilles heel. The use of social media and other online services by members of the Australian Defence Force generates significant security vulnerabilities for themselves, their friends, and their families, as personal information (including family details) can be exploited by malicious threat actors as a potentially rich source of intelligence. Recent observations during a major Australian Army exercise highlight an apparent operations security risk resulting from the prolific personal use of social media by members of the Australian Defence Force. There are three potential ramifications of this operational security risk. First, threats to individual members of the Australian Defence Force, their friends, and their families in the present day. Second, it poses risks to individual members of the Australian Defence Force, their friends, and their families in the future due to the cumulative use of Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 24
social media as Australian Defence Force members become more senior and potentially gain the interest of Foreign Intelligence Services. Finally, it creates conditions that allow a malicious actor to generate actionable intelligence from aggregating and correlating multiple sources of information. During Exercise Hamel in June 2016, personal or sensitive information was identified on social media for 680 Australian Defence Force members. This information was freely available and gained via the internet without the use of malicious or even remotely sophisticated methods. Using only openly available tools and techniques, and social media information posted by members of the Australian Defence Force, Intelligence Analysts were able to identify the location, nomenclature, equipment, and organisation of deployed forces. The process of geolocation, enables the location of images to be determined often with a very high degree of accuracy. Confirmation through the correlation of other open sources of content can, in some cases, result in the production of highly accurate, actionable intelligence that could be immediately targetable. The advent of the smart phone and a proclivity to share information on social media with wide-ranging networks has simplified the opportunity for Australian Defence Force members to inadvertently breach security. The monitoring capability used to gather and collate this social media information during Exercise Hamel was relatively unsophisticated, when compared to known capabilities of current and potential adversaries. Sensitive and/or personal information was freely available on social media. The key reasons for this availability included: 1. Poor security settings on social media profile (mostly Facebook). 2. Geo-tagged posts linking locations to Australian Defence Force members and activities. 3. Uploaded images linking Australian Defence Force members to their Australian Defence Force service and actual role. 4. Australian Defence Force public affairs posts or images that linked Australian Defence Force members to Exercise Hamel. 5. Links from Australian Defence Force members to numerous other Australian Defence Force members through friend lists, comments, and tagged posts. 6. ‘Liked’ Defence related pages, such as the official Facebook page of the member’s unit that had uploaded defence-related images, such as a graduation from recruit training. In isolation, the security effect of each individual observation was minor. However, the aggregation of multiple sources of open source information created significant weaknesses in the online profiles of a large number of Australian Defence Force members. The proliferation of the use of social media and open source media platforms by Australian Defence Force members and the general public has resulted in a plethora of publicly available sensitive and personal information that has the potential to be exploited by malicious threat actors, who do not respect Australian domestic laws, such as the Privacy Act 1988. Such threat actors could potentially use sensitive and personal information on Australian Defence Force members for malicious activity such as: 1. Defeating passwords. Personal details are often used in passwords and can be easily entered into free password cracking software as part of a cyber attack. Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 25
2. Social engineering. Email accounts are generally used to reset passwords for multiple websites and accounts such as PayPal, eBay, and Amazon. 3. Identity theft. One in five Australians becomes, often unknowingly, the victim of identity theft. Australians are also disproportionately likely to be the victim of identify theft over all other forms of crime.[ii] 4. Exploitation by Foreign Intelligence Services. Foreign Intelligence Services, including Da’esh and the Cyber Caliphate employ thousands of people to regularly acquire information on military personnel and their families. 5. Physical interception. Locations that are visited and geo-tagged online can lead to physical interception of sensitive items, such as mobile phones, that can subsequently be used to attack banking, email, and social media accounts. 6. Blackmail. Embarrassing information from dating/adult websites or family members’ sensitive information can be used to extort individuals for financial or personal gain. While social media has many clear benefits in sharing information regarding the raising, training and sustaining of military forces, much of that information is also relevant to operations. Details regarding the status of friendly military capabilities, including personnel information; family information; tactics, techniques and procedures; and training standards are valuable to current and potential future adversaries. The risk of using social media to share such information must be recognised, assessed, treated, and the residual risk accepted. Noting the observations from Exercise Hamel, a re-assessment of Army’s social media usage policy is required. This is to ensure an appropriate balance where the safety of Army personnel and sensitive information is protected, while at the same time, our people and organisations continue to employ appropriate social media to engender transparency and a closer connection between the military and Australian society. A Safe Middle Path – Some Rules for Australian Defence Force Use This paper does not propose that members of the Australian Defence Force, and the Army in particular, should be banned or dissuaded from using social media. The benefits of personal and institutional use of social media, and the likelihood many would ignore any bans, precludes such an approach. But the Australian Defence Force does have an obligation to ensure its members use social media responsibly and safely. This will ensure the safety of individuals and operational information. Such a social media safety campaign would help ensure that exposure to online threats can be reduced. This might entail relatively simple security measures such as locking accounts so that they are accessible by known entities only. There are a number of other actions that can be taken by Australian Defence Force members to limit individual and organisational online vulnerability, including: 1. Arranging privacy settings to protect a personal social media profile, noting that individual account settings can affect anyone that has links to that account. 2. Speaking to family and friends about what they post and ‘tag’ to their social media accounts. 3. Considering what is uploaded, whether it is an image or information, and who may access it. 4. Awareness of geo-data attached to uploaded content. Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 26
5. Considering whether there is a need to identify as a military member, and what other personal and sensitive information is attached to Australian Defence Force member’s social media profile. These rules can provide the balance of safe use by our people, while allowing them to use social media for personal and professional applications. But it is also clear that employment of social media for collecting information also has great utility. If used appropriately, social media and open source content can also provide an excellent opportunity to develop tactical situational awareness in support of military planning and decision making. Fusion with other intelligence sources can present friendly commanders with a near real-time understanding of atmospherics and critical warnings and indicators for adversarial force actions and intent. Information that would have previously taken traditional intelligence sources days or weeks to confirm can now be collated and analysed almost immediately. Additionally, social media can be used for our own influence, psychological operations, and deception purposes. Russian sympathisers utilised such capabilities to good effect in Ukraine, and the Australian Army could develop similar tactics for use against our adversaries. It is also clear that social media has military application in sentiment analysis, influence operations and locating persons of interest. Army must educate soldiers and officers regarding the threats and vulnerabilities of posting information on social media, and the importance of essential elements of friendly information. It is not clear how many Army unit commanders produce essential elements of friendly information and then advise their soldiers and officers so that they can know what information they can and cannot post on social media. The observations from Exercise Hamel 16 highlight the lack of security planning and awareness that comes from the absence of command prioritisation and formal articulation of what information is to be protected. Conclusion Unsurprisingly, social media can be both the cause of and the solution to your organisational crisis. It’s an ally and an enemy at the same time. Nicole Matejic
The employment of social media by our people and institutions has a compelling logic. It is simple to use, allows the easy sharing of information and enhances transparency of national institutions such as the Army. But the use of social media is not risk free. As this paper has described, unconstrained and uninformed use of social media poses a threat to personnel and sensitive information in the Australian Defence Force. There is neither a rationale nor capacity to prevent the use of social media by Australian Defence Force personnel for security reasons. But as an institution that seeks to successfully prosecute operations and keep its people safe, the Australian Defence Force has a responsibility to provide education and guidance to its people on safe social media use. That
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 27
has been the primary aim of this paper; to highlight the benefits and risks of social media and then provide a reasonable middle path.
About the authors Brigadier Mick Ryan, AM is the Australian Army’s Director General Training and Doctrine and recently authored A study of Army’s education, training and doctrine needs for the future. Brigadier Marcus Thompson, AM is Australian Army’s Commander 6th Combat Suport Brigade and has a PhD in cyber security from the University of New South Wales. References 1. Czuperski, M., Herbst, J., Higgins, E., Polyakova, A. and Wilson, D., 2015. Hiding in plain sight: Putin’s war in Ukraine. Atlantic Council. Accessed July 26, 2016. http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/news/in-thenews/czuperski-on-hiding-in-plain-sight 2. Matejic, N., Social Media Rules of Engagement, John Wiley and Sons, Melbourne, 2015. 3. UK Government guidance: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/think-before-you-share 4. US DoD training and education: http://dodcio.defense.gov/Social-Media/Social-Media-Education-andTraining/ 5. http://www.forthoodpresscenter.com/external/content/document/3439/1416891/1/ENCLOSURE%203 %20SM%20OPSEC%20BRIEF.pdf 6. UK Military Social Media Guide: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/34247/social_ media_info_card.pdf End Notes [i] David Dowling, Social Media Statistics Australia – June 2016, http://www.socialmedianews.com.au/socialmedia-statistics-australia-june-2016/, accessed 26 July 2016. [ii] Australian Government, Attorney Generals Department, Identity Crime and Misuse in Australia, 2013-14, 2015. Source: https://www.ag.gov.au/RightsAndProtections/IdentitySecurity/Documents/Identity-Crime-andMisuse-in-Australia-2013-14.pdf - See more at: http://groundedcuriosity.com/social-media-in-the-military-opportunities-perils-and-a-safe-middlepath/#sthash.YMJDiJEz.2lxBaKHh.dpuf
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 28
ComIPI is a no-profit study center aimed at developing and implementing advanced techniques to communicate with the public while respecting ethical principles. Edited by Franco Veltri info@comipi.it www.comipi.it our Blog: http://comipi.wordpress.com/
This Digest will welcome proposals for themes and stories to be included in the next issue. Please send your recommendations to
info@comipi.it Please feel free to forward our link to anybody who may be interested in reading this Digest.
follow us!
Quarterly Digest of Public Affairs News – 3-2016
Edited by ComIPI – www.comipi.it 29