This is a flow chart devised by the US Air Force, not the most immediate target for negativity but nopw somethign of a priority for them. The flow chart is one that could be lifted and embedded into communication strategy by any organisation.
The strategy, as introduced to me, is this: It's all part of an Air Force push to "counter the people out there in the blogosphere who have negative opinions about the U.S. government and the Air Force," Captain David Faggard says. Over the last couple of years, the armed forces have tried, in fits and starts, to connect more with bloggers. The Army and the Office of the Secretary of Defense now hold regular "bloggers' roundtables" with generals, colonels, and key civilian leaders. The Navy invited a group of bloggers to embed with them on a humanitarian mission to Central and South America, last summer. Military blogger Michael Yon recently traveled to Afghanistan with Defense Secretary Robert Gates. In contrast, the Air Force has largely kept the blogosphere at arms' length. Most of the sites are banned from Air Force networks. And the service has mostly stayed away from the Pentagon's blog outreach efforts. Captain Faggard, who's become the Air Force Public Affairs Agency's designated social media guru, has made strides in shifting that attitude. The air service now has a Twitter feed, a blog of its own -- and marching orders, for how to comment on other sites. "We're trying to get people to understand that they can do this," he says. I'm guessign he is also getting people to understand its importance also! The obvious problem is that you end up doing nothing more than reacting, but perhaps every organisation, and especially every party during the general election, will have to decide how to deal with attacks on blogs, which ones to respond to and which to ignore and how to cope with what is likely to become a co-produced campaign experience where everyone contributes something somewhere that has an impact on someone elses' political choice making.
