Monday 13 February, 2006

Military blogworld

Two Hundred American soldiers in Iraq run personal blogs out of internet cafes in US camps and it's making the military nervous. As Home Cooked Theory, a blog which describes itself as the 'Quasi-academic musings of a Brisbane Research Fellow', writes, 'Big institutions like the military can't afford to have honest portrayals of their daily machinations circulating in the wider public.' Home Cooked Theory picked up on a Sydney Morning Herald article on this subject (sorry, no link -missed the boat and now it's been archived) in considering the broader ramifications of the increasing popularity of a form that was only recently considered a personal and slightly self-indulgent activity - an offshoot of diary writing, or a letter home. 'The growing popularity of blogging demonstrates just how much people crave outlets that express the human dimensions and personal experiences that persist in spite of the sterile landscape institutional language would paint for us.' The Military's discomfort with sites such as New Life in which some of the harsh realities of war are described, alongside the subtler traumas of settling back into life once you return from a tour of duty - like trying to find a job and patch a family back together - has lead to soldiers being asked to apply for official approval to write a personal blog and soldiers have been punished for publishing sensitive information. It's reminiscent of soldiers letters from the battlefields of WW1 and 2 being censored. Perhaps this is why Sergeant Lizzie includes the following disclaimer on her site: 'This is not a political blog, not an opinionated blog intended to cause controversy. This is just my life . . .' But this is an age where trying to live an ordinary life can be construed as a highly political act.

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