Armed Forces, Cyberspace, and Global Images

• Author: Eyal Ben-Ari,Oren Golan
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X16670694
• Published date: 01 April 2018
• Date: 01 April 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Armed Forces,

Cyberspace, and Global

Images: The Official

Website of the Israeli

Defense Forces 2007–2015

Oren Golan

1

and Eyal Ben-Ari

2

Abstract

This study centers on the relation between militaries, violence, and publicly available

digital images. Military websites can be characterized as forms of representation of

national institutions comparable to the sites of any large organization. However, the

way these websites publicly frame and explain the military’s use of organized vio-

lence has not been investigated. Accordingly, this study examines how contempo-

rary militaries manage their public and online relation to their core expertise,

organized violence. The analysis is based on a longitudinal analysis of the Israeli

Defense Force’s (IDF) official websites (2007–2015) and interviews with key web-

masters. The integration of the Internet and new media into the IDF’s official

websites highlights its deliberate move into the cybernetic realm to manage, order,

manipulate, and handle its public images and representations as a legitimate social

institution charged with using violence in the defense of the country.

Keywords

violence, digital militarism, new media, Israel, armed forces

1

Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

2

The Kinneret Center on Peace, Security and Society in Memory of Dan Shomron, Kinneret College

on the Sea of Galilee, Tzemach, Israel

Corresponding Author:

Oren Golan, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, 199 Abba Khoushy Ave, Haifa 3498838, Israel.

Email: ongolan@gmail.com

Armed Forces & Society

2018, Vol. 44(2) 280-300

ªThe Author(s) 2016

Reprints and permission:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X16670694

journals.sagepub.com/home/afs

Open the official English-language website of the Is rael Defense Forces (IDFs)

http://www.idfblog.com. You will be confronted with a collage of images and words

depicting the IDF as an organization with a very human face, dedicated to safe-

guarding the values of a global community. While it is difficult to convey in written

form the richness of images found even on one page, its construction raises a number

of questions for students of the military. At the height of its online activity, the

website offered a rich public profile of the IDF that was globally accessible and

served as a conduit for official missive s. At one typical point, the website (see

Figure 1) displays an image of three women positioned with berets on their heads,

rifles in their hand and an armored personnel carrier in the back staring directly at the

camera. This shot is captioned ‘‘Brave, Fierce, and Strong: Meet the First Women to

Guard in Nablus.’’ On the right-hand side of the page, one finds a list of static pinned

Figure 1. IDF English Homepage (August 6, 2015).

Golan and Ben-Ari 281