Armed Forces’ Public Relations: Competition and Differentiation

• In Event: Communication and Coordination Under Conflict

Abstract

Armed actors like the military, police, terrorist groups, and pro-government militias invest substantial resources in communicating publicly with non-combatants. They do so across a wide range of platforms, from press releases to social media, and cover an even wider range of content. What explains the extent and variation in this public messaging? We argue that in modern, multifaceted conflicts, armed forces fighting on the same side compete with one another for resources like qualified recruits, foreign assistance, and civilian support. Because they share an overarching political objective, they differentiate themselves by publicly emphasizing characteristics on which they hold a comparative advantage over other armed forces. This competition explains much of the variation in the content, sentiment, and platform of armed forces’ public messages. We explore this theory using a new dataset of press releases and tweets from several pro-government armed institutions fighting to protect the Iraqi government against the Islamic State. We find that the content and sentiment of messages sent varies systematically across armed actors even within a side. Ministry of Defense tweets and press releases contain messages of civic nationalism and portray the positive lives of soldiers during service. In contrast, messaging by the Popular Mobilization forces, a loose conglomeration of militias fighting against the Islamic State, use religious imagery to emphasize both the duty of protecting one’s community and the atrocities of the enemy which justify fighting. We also explore variation in the timing and platform of messages. This paper and the evidence in it updates theories of armed forces public relations to account for the multifaceted nature of modern conflicts, both in terms of the communications technologies available to armed actors and also the multifaceted nature of fighting which creates competition for resources between actors fighting for the same overarching outcome.

Authors

• Austin Knuppe, Utah State University

• Matthew Nanes, Saint Louis University