It may only have been a week ago, but it seems as if a paradigm shift has taken place in security policy communication:<\/p>\n
In the past, major topics, i.e. those that everyone should be talking about, have always been dictated by the Federal Ministry of Defence. This has recently been particularly evident in the employer brand campaigns.
\nSince last Tuesday, a campaign has been running that was initiated by soldiers in their role as private individuals: Activists from the so-called #socialmediadivision have taken a political stance under the slogan #weagainstextremism. Supported by images and videos showing the protagonists plus a steadily growing number of followers in an iconic way, the unmistakable message is spreading like wildfire on social networks. The tone is set on Instagram in particular, which is then spread via Twitter and LinkedIn.
\nDespite some criticism of the presentation and background of the campaign, it has been successful in that many people are talking about it. After the Minister of Defence, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, tweeted her approval, an official statement from her authority promptly followed in the same way, which also reads positively.
\nExperts are now asking whether the campaign is merely a successful individual action or even marks the beginning of a new form of security policy \"agenda setting\" - based on the \"bottom-up\" principle. This refers to the consideration of the extent to which authorities still have the sole sovereignty to place high-profile topics in their own department. The #socialmediadivision shows what an (employee) network that functions according to different rules than institutional organisations such as trade unions or working groups is capable of.<\/p>\n
What does this have to do with the maritime sector?<\/em><\/p>\n On the one hand, many marines of all ranks are involved in both the #socialmediadivision and its #wirgegenextremismus campaign. It is therefore by no means the case that the network is only supported by a specific career group. Moreover, the campaign creates a common Bundeswehr identity without allowing the branches of the armed forces to disappear into a sea of green polygons. In other words, all those comrades who took part in typical naval uniforms also sent a signal about how diverse the force is. Text: NIT team of authors, Photo: Campaign<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Es ist zwar erst eine Woche her, aber es scheint, als h\u00e4tte sich in der sicherheitspolitischen Kommunikation ein Paradigmenwechsel vollzogen: Gro\u00dfe Themen, also solche, \u00fcber die jedermann sprechen sollte, wurden in der Vergangenheit stets vom Bundesministerium der Verteidigung vorgegeben. Dies zeigte sich zuletzt vor allem an den Aktionen der Arbeitgebermarke. Seit vergangenem Dienstag l\u00e4uft nun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":8746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50,42],"tags":[182,824,820,830,823,828,829,825,78,564,567,821,827,826,822],"class_list":["post-8748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sicherheitspolitik-news","category-news","tag-deutsche-marine","tag-facebook","tag-german-navy","tag-influencer","tag-instagram","tag-journalismus","tag-journalist","tag-linkedin","tag-marine","tag-news","tag-social-media","tag-soziale-medien","tag-soziale-plattform","tag-soziales-netzwerk","tag-twitter","post_status-warten-auf-freigabe"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSecondly, the campaign should be a lesson to maritime organisations about the (external) power of their own employees. The question is therefore no longer necessarily which issues are politically important, but which ones are important to the organisation's own employees. Of course, safe sea routes are needed - but what does that mean for the individual crew member or harbour worker? And what connects them to each other?
\nRegardless of what you think of social media in general and the #socialmediadivision in particular, what happens there is no longer an echo chamber, but has ushered in a new phase of security policy communication.<\/p>\n