Thursday 15 November 2012

Social media

The Israeli Defence Force has a Twitter account. I'm not sure whether or not it has a Facebook page. 

Is this the tip of the iceberg? It now seems obligatory for every faceless organisation or eminent personage to Tweet in a way that was once the province of the unknown individual who could string 140 characters together.

Yet the courts know differently of course and famously people have been proscecuted for facetious threats to public security on Twitter and, most recently, detained for posting pictures of burning Remembrance poppies on Facebook. It is not an offence to offend, but grossly to offend is. But that clearly is not a rubric under which Defence Forces, of whatever nation, might come undone. I am not sure whether it was the UK that led the way in the particular change in nomenclature when in 1964 it merges the old War Office into the new Ministry of Defence.

As Twitter itself puts it, "Follow your friends, experts, favorite celebrities, and breaking news."