How Military Communicators Can Apply Lessons from Crowdsourcing, Politics and the Global Impact of Emerging Media

In the military, should you find yourself working in the realm of public affairs or mass communications, you may run into a situation where you encounter what is called crowdsourcing.

It is more common than you may think.

In fact, it’s highly likely that you’ve encountered crowdsourcing yourself while scrolling through the internet or on social media. If you have heard of websites like Wikipedia or Yelp, then you have experienced a model of crowdsourcing. If you have ever seen an advertisement that asked for your feedback, you have experienced crowdsourcing.

But how does crowdsourcing relate to us as current or potential military communicators? The answer is politics and sourcing to begin with.

So, to start things, off, let’s first identity what exactly crowdsourcing is. The man who coined the term, author Jeff Howe, defines crowdsourcing as “the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call.”

Crowdsourcing allows an individual, company, politician, etc. to have a direct line of feedback with their audience. It is a tool that allows people to gather data, insights, and maybe even new ideas on a problem at stake.

Politicians may use crowdsourcing tactics like surveys in order to gauge public opinion on a matter at hand. For you as a military communicator, crowdsourcing should not be your top priority. That is because your job is to stick to the facts and provide information to your internal audience (service members, DoD civilians) and your external audience (the news media, American people) in a timely manner.

There is no room for editorializing as a military communicator. What do I mean by that? Glad you asked!

When you think of being a military communicator, think of black and white messages. That’s not to say you can not be a creative communicator. You can and you will, especially when it comes to taking photographs or creating a video. However, when it comes to writing press releases or feature stories, your language will be cut and dry. You cannot editorialize in the military.

For more information on not editorializing, refer to the Department of Defense’s principles of information, which outlines how you can release information to your audiences as a military communicator.

In terms of crowdsourcing, you will not be able to create campaigns that ask the public for their opinions on subjects. For starters, that is not what we as military communicators do. We report facts to our internal and external audiences. We are not a business that is trying to grow its revenue (however, we are trying to increase recruitment during this current recruitment shortage!).

Another thing to watch out for as a military communicator is how you source your information. AS mentioned, Wikipedia is a great example of crowdsourcing. The site can literally be edited by anyone in the world. In fact, when I was in middle school, I edited a page on Wikipedia! It was a good laugh for our class when my teacher pulled up the page I edited and saw my name on it…

My point being is that we do not want to ever find ourselves using Wikipedia to site information. This goes for journalists in general. Because these sites are edited by anyone and everyone, that do not make them 100% reliable.

There is also the element of politics. In military communications, politics seem to be prevalent. You could argue that the command messaging, which is what you will be responsible for promoting at your specific unit as a military communicator, is an example of politics in of itself. But politicians utilize crowdsourcing to gain an understanding on the voters at hand—i.e. the people they are relying on to get them in office.

Again, military members do not fall under this category. We are not expected to be running campaigns to keep the base commander in their current position. We are not expected to reach out to the community and gain the input from the people, whether that is our internal or external audience.

Our job is to simply release information in a timely manner. Should you become a military communicator, you will hear this phrase a lot in your career: maximum disclosure, minimum delay. We want to release as much hard, factual information as we can to our internal and external audiences. That does not mean we are expected to crowdsource.

Crowdsourcing in politics also has the benefits of feedback and public opinion data with the target audience. It allows politicians to have a direct line of communication with their constituents or the voters themselves. In turn, the politicians can then respond to this crowdsourcing information. Again, this is where the military differs: we do not respond to how the public takes in information. We simply release information to inform.

Should you enter the realm of recruiting in the military, you may find yourself dabbling with crowdsourcing to learn more about your target demographics to fill empty spots in your branch of service. Crowdsourcing allows you to weigh public opinion, which could be helpful for a military recruiter that is trying to understand what type of people want to join the military or to answer why people do not want to join.

For instance, some military recruiters are utilizing a form of emerging media that is actually prohibited for government employees in TikTok, which has been banned by U.S. employees because of the Chinese involvement. Recruiters still use TikTok (which you could see for yourself just by going on the app right now and looking up military recruitment) to reach young people because young people are using this form of emerging media!

The recruiters are doing this so they can gauge public opinion on joining the military and to get feedback, both of which are two prime benefits to crowdsourcing.

While we are on the topic of emerging media, let’s look at some examples that you as a military communicator will encounter.

TikTok may be banned, but you can still utilize Instagram Reels and Facebook’s video feature to share similar style videos! You will also be using Twitter, now known as X, to reach your internal and external audiences. You can also use YouTube Shorts, which is another newer form of video posting that can be seen as an emerging media.

As mentioned, military communication may seem very black and white at times. You will not really be re-inventing the wheel here. You will stick to a proven formula. There is room for creativity, though, when it comes to your photography and videography.