Confessions and Tweets: Social Media and Everyday Experience in the Israel Defense Forces

• Author: Nehemia Stern,Uzi Ben Shalom
• Published date: 01 April 2021
• Date: 01 April 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X19859304
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Confessions and Tweets:

Social Media and

Everyday Experience in

the Israel Defense Forces

Nehemia Stern

1

and Uzi Ben Shalom

1

Abstract

This article explores the social media postings of Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

soldiers on two different and unofficial Facebook groups. While scholars of armed

forces and society have noted the growing importance that militaries have placed

on digital media, there is little data regarding the unofficial uses and meanings that

regular soldiers themselves make of social networking sites. With an anthro-

pological focus on everyday experiences, we argue that the social media activity of

IDF personnel highlights the quotidian aspects of military life in ways that rever-

berate beyond the strictly ideological or political facets of their service. Here,

soldiers can express their frustrations with military bureaucracy, while also pre-

senting a lighthearted (and positive) commentary on a shared rite of passage. This

research opens a window into the lives and dilemmas of the first generation of

Israeli soldiers to employ new media as a taken for granted aspect of their service.

Keywords

social media, Facebook, IDF, Israel, military

In 2013, the commanding colonel of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) infantry brigade

repeated a popular joke that the most common contemporary Israeli youth “move-

ment”is the humble finger swipe. His remark was referring to the very familiar

1

Sociology and Anthropology Department, Ariel University, Ariel, Israel

Corresponding Author:

Nehemia Stern, Sociology and Anthropology Department, Ariel University, Ariel 40700, Israel.

Email: nastern26@gmail.com

Armed Forces & Society

2021, Vol. 47(2) 343-366

ªThe Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X19859304

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motion of swiping one’s finger across the touchscreen of a smartphone (Harel, 2013,

p. 110). At stake in this semi-humorous comment rests, a deeper concern about the

effects of the widespread use of digital media on the morale, professionalism, and

combat effectiveness of the IDF itself (Fajardo, 2014; Padan & Tarzi Kresler, 2015).

Can young adults who seem to be so connected to the digital worlds of Facebook,

Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram on their individual smartphones come together in

their military units to make the daily sacrifices that are so much a part of their

conscripted experience?

Social scientists have been quick to explore the official importance that the IDF

itself places on digital technologies and social media sites (Caldwell, William,

Murphy, & Menning, 2009; Golan & Ben-Ari, 2018; Kohn, 2017; Seo, 2014; Stein,

2012). For the IDF, social media has become a new and potent technological tool in

the battle of public relations (Stein, 2012, p. 896). Sites such as Facebook and

Twitter provide a means through which the IDF, and other militaries, manage and

cultivate an official positive “public image”while engaging in ongoing asymme-

trical (and often controversial) violent conflicts (Christsensen, 2008; Golan &

Ben-Ari, 2018, p. 282).

Much of this current scholarship asks how social media use in the IDF aids or

hinders the official, strategic, political, or doctrinal contexts of military conflict. Yet,

as anthropologists of the IDF’s policing actions in the West Bank have demonstrated

(Ben Ari & Sion, 2005; Feige & Ben Ari, 1991; Grassiani, 2015), so much of the

military’s activities in areas of conflict are grounded in the eve ryday experienc es of

soldiers on the ground. Scholars of armed forces and society have little empirical

data regarding the unofficial (and often subversive) uses that IDF soldiers them-

selves make of social networking sites and the meanings they ascribe to them. In

this way, a key digital component to better comprehending the everyday experi-

ences of soldiers is lost to social scientific investigation. To address this issue, we

apply an anthropological outlook that privileges a “ground-up”view of social

media activity. This perspective treats social media posts as ethnographic evidence

that can be used to distinctly highlight the everyday “realities and necessities”

(Geertz, 2008, p. 323) of military service as expressed by enlisted soldiers and

junior officers, as opposed to the more official social mediamessages expressed by

IDF command authorities.

We argue that the social media activity of these IDF personnel reflects the

quotidian experiences of military life in ways that reverberate beyond the strictly

ideological or political aspects of their service. On the one hand, soldiers can express

criticism of the military, and deep frustration at how its disciplinary bureaucracy can

so easily diminish individual desire. On the other hand, these posts also offer a

lighthearted (and even positive) commentary on a commonly shared rite of passage

and offer emotional support to other soldiers. For the many soldiers who post, share,

and comment, social media platforms stand as a unique medium through which they

can express a “mixture of mainstream, alternative, hegemonic and potentially sub-

versive”messages concerning their own service (Christensen, 2008, p. 156).

344 Armed Forces & Society 47(2)