When Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson took to the airwaves to argue that the Pentagon adjusting regulations for pregnant women made a mockery of the armed forces as China focuses on building a stronger Navy, senior military leaders issued a sharp rebuke, many of them on Twitter.
The incident was one of many contrived television news events designed to provoke a reaction, however, it also revealed another issue in how senior military leaders can and do engage with service members on the internet.
"The 'Miltwitter' community was asking where our senior leaders are" on the Tucker Carlson issue, said 3rd Special Forces Group Public Affairs Officer Capt. Rick Dickson. Miltwitter is a reference to veterans and active-duty service members on Twitter. According to Dickson this "small group of people have a disproportionate influence on senior leaders in the military."
In response to Miltwitter's complaints that the military was not offering enough pushback to Carlson's claims that female uniform policies were a mockery, senior military leaders began posting their own video rebuttals to the Fox News host. This in turn led to consternation about civilian-military relations, and questions of whether uniformed service members should criticize someone like Carlson.
Despite the knee-jerk reactions, Dickson advised caution and prudence in how service members approach social media.
"It is good to stick up for what you believe in and Tucker's comments were not good, to say the least," Dickson told Connecting Vets. "I don't understand the need for the Sergeant Major of the Army to go on CNN, the competitor of Fox, because it creates a perception. I would have advised going on Fox with Tucker directly and correcting the record," he said.
"Say women are valued and great members of our team and that's perfectly fine. But the optics was that Fox is taken as right-wing and CNN is taken as left-wing and when you go on a direct competitor's network, it looks like you are choosing a side," Dickson, who has a graduate degree in communication from Johns Hopkins, said.
"Overall senior leaders did do the right thing by disputing the incorrect information and disparaging comments about a large portion of their force," Jennifer Dolsen, an advisor who trains Army units how to interact with the media, told Connecting Vets.
"If you let something dominate public discourse or let incorrect info dominate the discourse, it will grow legs and get out of control to the point that you can't control that narrative," she said.
Beyond the immediacy of Carlson's comments, the incident also exposed what appears to be a schism among some troops and veterans choosing sides in America's culture wars. However, the reality is that while these dynamics are prominent on Twitter, they may not reflect real military culture.
"There is no discourse, no objectiveness, it's just rhetoric," Dickson said of Miltwitter. "If we are going to have respect and dignity in the workplace then we need it between military members on social media.
"Would we be having these same conversations in the workplace? I got called trash for saying we should not ban a mainstream news outlet on televisions on base. Would senior officers let a senior NCO walk up to an officer and call them trash? There is no dignity and respect for most users on Twitter in the military community. They are divided and everything is fair game and there is no control over it," Dickson said.
The animosity and division amongst service members and veterans on Twitter really is an echo chamber according to Dickson, one which does not exist in the offices, team rooms and staffs that actually compose today's military.
"People in the office have no idea what's going on in Twitter," he said. "Nobody in my shop even knows" about the drama, he said, "because they are not on Twitter."
From Dickson's perspective, senior military leaders mean well in how they use Twitter. They see it as a way to take the pulse of the force, to reach out directly to service members who they may not see in their offices and get their perspectives. However, the loudest, youngest, most vocal service members of Miltwitter may not be an accurate sample size of the overall military population.
Disproportionate or not, Dolsen believes military leaders have to be on any social media platform that service members use.
"They should use all social media to take the pulse, and public affairs should do that. They should do that with all social media because service members are on all of these various platforms. I think they have to, I don't think it matters that only a certain percentage is there, I don't know that it actually matters more than what you are actually seeing," she explained.
"I think that there is a lot of attention given to younger lieutenants and the point of all this is to get a pulse of the entire military but then it becomes we are only listening to you," Dickson said. "Quite frankly, they have not been in long enough to understand the Army culture. For some reason, they have a lot of influence over senior leaders. It's been building up and this past week was a blow-up. It only happens on Twitter, not on other platforms."
"You are getting a very small perspective from a very small population. It is not the Army," Dickson said. "From the outside looking in, it looks like we are arguing and fighting every single day. I've had emotional reactions and said things I should not have said and I had to learn from that. If we are calling each other names that is a respect problem, and it can turn into a discipline issue if it gets out of control.
Dolsen said she believes that it is important for military leaders to be on Twitter and engage with service members, as well as the media and the public at large. "It is about engaging and creating this discourse, and creating boundaries as well for senior leaders as well as junior and maybe that is something that is not being identified well or being done within the Army at least," she said.
"There is no dialog or discourse. I don't know why it has come to this. Senior leaders on that platform have a lot influence on this and unfortunately, they don't say to keep it respectful and remind people that they are still in the military," Dickson said.
"Some people feel like the don't have a voice and can't say what they think without getting crushed on Twitter. If your soldier came to you in the work place and said that, it would be problem," he said.
"The infighting doesn't help, lots of non-military the average U.S. citizen look at our nuanced infighting and don't have much understanding," Dolsen says. "So what senior military leaders do, you choose to engage in a public-facing platform be it social media or radio, it could be a service member, could be a troll, could be someone's mom. If you get into that infighting or are not clear with words and rhetoric you are setting yourself up to be tuned out or restrict yourself to a very small niche which is military."
From her point of view, it is important for military leaders to have a focus and reason for why they are on social media. If they lose that focus, things quickly come off the rails.
"Having an idea of highlighting the positive things that your soldiers are doing creates a constructive environment where soldiers will engage you in a positive way. You have to be able to practice some restraint," she said.
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