Contemporary Authors

• Friended at the Front: Social Media in the American War Zone University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), 2015

1. Friended at the front : social media in the American war zone LCCN 2015020375 Type of material Book Personal name Silvestri, Lisa Ellen. Main title Friended at the front : social media in the American war zone / Lisa Ellen Silvestri. Published/Produced Lawrence, Kansas : University Press of Kansas, [2015] Description xv, 239 pages ; 24 cm. ISBN 9780700621361 (cloth : alk. paper) Shelf Location FLM2015 261520 CALL NUMBER U766 .S58 2015 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2)

• Gonzaga University - http://www.gonzaga.edu/academics/colleges-and-schools/College-of-Arts-and-Sciences/Majors-Programs/Communication-Studies/Faculty.asp

  Dr. Lisa Silvestri
  Assistant Professor

  502 E Boone
  AD Box 022
  Spokane, WA 99258

  Phone: (509) 313-6551

  Office Location
  College Hall 432N

  Office Hours
  Spring 2017
  Monday: 12:00pm - 2:00pm
  Wednesday: 12:00pm - 2:00pm

  or by appointment

  Ph.D., Communication Studies, University of Iowa
  M.A., Communication and Culture, Indiana University
  B.A., Journalism, Indiana University

  Dr. Lisa Silvestri, author of Friended at the Front: Social Media in the American War Zone, studies the ethical and moral dimensions of digital culture and the problem of war. She uses rhetorical criticism as a mode of cultural production. Her work appears in Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture, Media War & Conflict, The Review of Communication, Soundings, and Visual Communication Quarterly. She likes to teach her students that some of the most impactful scholarship does not arrive at answers but illuminates texts to raise new questions and start productive conversations.

• University of Kansas Press - https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2136-1.html

  Friended at the Front
  Social Media in the American War Zone

  Lisa Ellen Silvestri

  James W. Carey Media Research Award

  For most of us, clicking like on social media has become fairly routine. For a Marine, clicking like from the battlefield lets his social network know hes alive. This is the first time in the history of modern warfare that US troops have direct, instantaneous connection to civilian life back home. Lisa Ellen Silvestris Friended at the Front documents the revolutionary change in the way we communicate across fronts. Social media, Silvestri contends, changes what it's like to be at war.

  “In the end, this book is a must-read for soldiers, scholars, policymakers, and citizens who would like to gain insight into the impact of social media in contemporary conflict and how the lines between the home front and the war front are becoming ever more blurred.”

  —H-Net Review

  “Offers a comprehensive analysis of the role that social media play in the lives of an often-overlooked population: the US military, both deployed and domestic. The book is accessible to even novice social media enthusiasts yet deep enough to command the attention of advanced scholars.”

  —Choice

  See all reviews...
  Based on in-person interviews and online fieldwork with US Marines, Friended at the Front explores the new media habits, attitudes, and behaviors of troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some of the complications that emerge in their wake. The book pays particular attention to the way US troops use Facebook and YouTube to narrate their experiences to civilian network members, to each other, and, not least of all, to themselves. After she reviews evolving military guidelines for social media engagement, Silvestri explores specific practices amongst active duty Marines such as posting photos and producing memes. Her interviews, observations, and research reveal how social network sites present both an opportunity to connect with civilians back home, as well as an obligation to do so—one that can become controversial for troops in a war zone.

  Much like the war on terror itself, the boundaries, expectations, and dangers associated with social media are amorphous and under constant negotiation. Friended at the Front explains how our communication landscape changes what it is like to go to war for individual service members, their loved ones, and for the American public at large.

  About the Author

  Lisa Ellen Silvestri is assistant professor of communication studies at Gonzaga University.

• -

4/12/17, 10)03 PM
Print Marked Items
Friended at the Front: Social Media in the American War Zone
John Emery
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online. (Nov. 2016): pNA(NA). From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Emery, John. "Friended at the Front: Social Media in the American War Zone." H-Net: Humanities and Social
Sciences Online, 2016, p. NA(NA). PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA475573969&it=r&asid=c5590cdb6aa0b70e03bbb31ad02a8ad4. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A475573969
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Silvestri, Lisa Ellen: Friended at the front: social media in the American war zone
N.D. Bowman
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.10 (June 2016): p1471. From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bowman, N.D. "Silvestri, Lisa Ellen: Friended at the front: social media in the American war zone." CHOICE:
Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1471. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942670&it=r&asid=e7c014a406944532b5acabdf59721476. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A454942670
about:blank Page 2 of 2

Emery, John. "Friended at the Front: Social Media in the American War Zone." H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, 2016, p. NA(NA). PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA475573969&it=r. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017. Bowman, N.D. "Silvestri, Lisa Ellen: Friended at the front: social media in the American war zone." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1471. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942670&it=r. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.

• Gonzaga University
  http://news.gonzaga.edu/2016/professor-silvestri-explores-social-media-transformed-soldiers-experiences-war
  Word count: 712

  Professor Silvestri Explores How Social Media Has Transformed Soldiers’ Experiences of War
  Posted on March 23, 2016 in: Academics, Events, Faculty & Staff, Feature Stories, research, Social Media, Spotlight, Students

  Lisa Ellen Silvestri, assistant professor of communication studies.

  ‘Friended at the Front: Social Media in the American War Zone’

  By Margaret MacLean
  Class of 2017

  SPOKANE, Wash. – As social media has grown to become a ubiquitous part of contemporary American culture, scholars are studying its capacities for both good and ill. Lisa Ellen Silvestri, assistant professor of communication studies at Gonzaga University, explores how Facebook and YouTube have transformed soldiers’ experiences at the frontlines of war in her book, “Friended at the Front: Social Media in the American War Zone” (2015, University Press of Kansas).

  In a major shift in the wartime experience of American soldiers, their loved ones and the public, Facebook and other social media now offer troops the ability to instantly communicate to their networks of family and friends that they are alive, notes Silvestri, who earned a Ph.D. in communication studies from the University of Iowa.

  Informed by in-person interviews and online fieldwork with Marines, Silvestri’s book documents how new media have impacted the attitudes and behaviors of troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. The book also reviews the military’s developing guidelines for social media use – including some of its complications – and explores the current relationship between American soldiers and their social media pages from the frontlines of war.

  Silvestri grew up in Philadelphia, the daughter of a Vietnam War veteran who was drafted in 1966.

  “I grew up in that stereotypical Vietnam household where we just didn’t really talk about it,” said Silvestri, whose research centers on American politics and popular culture with a special focus on war and emergent communication technologies. “But it was something you could feel.”

  Her brother Jason enlisted in ROTC at Penn State University, graduated in 1999 as an officer, and received a scholarship to attend medical school. He was deployed to Iraq in 2005 and Afghanistan in 2013. Through some of the experiences of her father and brother, Silverstri developed a deep interest in war and how communication impacts military personnel.

  She interviewed 30 Marines from bases in Okinawa, Japan and Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California, and studied the Facebook pages of nine Marines. Through her interactions with American soldiers both at home and overseas, Silvestri learned that turning a human story into a book is both difficult and emotionally taxing.

  “The emotional toll of working with people is really hard,” Silvestri said. “People are so messy and unpredictable, and also they are so fragile and beautiful. To try and represent them in 12 point Times New Roman is really difficult to do.”

  At Gonzaga, Silvestri brings her expertise in social media and the digital age to her students – encouraging them to find their “unique voice” through the growing array of digital tools to present and analyze their ideas.

  “We’re all journalists to some degree with our cameras,” said Silvestri, who combines her experience with communication theories to teach students how to become proficient consumers and creators of quality digital information.

  “It comes directly out of my experience of writing this book, because I know that I had something unique, and that gave me a unique perspective and a unique voice. And it helped me write. So I’m trying to get my students to embrace that as well,” she said.

  During her students’ finals presentations last semester, Silvestri saw everything from the ways in which emoticons stifle emotional vocabulary to examples of how the Dark Knight and Batman reflect political policies on terrorism. She is pleased to see her students find their perspective through trial and error, much like she has done. She’s especially proud to see them looking for ways to use their skills and education to help others – in the centuries-old Jesuit tradition.

  “The students here are so invested, and they don’t just want to succeed, they really want to understand it so they can be men and women for others,” said Silvestri.

• H-War
  https://networks.h-net.org/node/12840/reviews/152690/emery-silvestri-friended-front-social-media-american-war-zone
  Word count: 1701

  Emery on Silvestri, 'Friended at the Front: Social Media in the American War Zone'

  Author:
  Lisa Ellen Silvestri
  Reviewer:
  John Emery

  Lisa Ellen Silvestri. Friended at the Front: Social Media in the American War Zone. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015. 288 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7006-2136-1.

  Reviewed by John Emery (University of California Irvine)
  Published on H-War (November, 2016)
  Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

  Lisa Ellen Silvestri’s Friended at the Front brings readers a fascinating look into the ways in which the Internet (especially social media) and troops at war mutually impact each other in contemporary conflict. Utilizing insights gained from in-person interviews with US Marines and a wide range of theoretical lenses, Silvestri offers a more holistic understanding of how soldiers frame their own narratives of war in the digital era. There has been much debate recently about the blurring of the war front and home front, with drone pilots who are “at war” one minute and picking their kids up from soccer practice the next. However, these debates miss how social media has done something similar in what we consider the more "traditional battlefields" of Iraq and Afghanistan. Hence, Silvestri illustrates how social media (such as Facebook and YouTube) has been integral to the lives of soldiers and their families, and proffers compelling analyses to interpret the blurring of the lines between home front and war front. Rather than focusing on the technology itself, she is “more interested in how people interact with those technologies. The goal is to understand how new modes of expression influence processes of human living” (p. 3).

  The book is organized into six chapters that trace evolving ideas of what it means to be “at war,” with insights gained from both service members and their social networks. The introduction gives the reader the lay of the land, with accessible theoretical framing via media studies, communication theory, and social theory that readers from all fields of study will find easy to follow and enlightening. The first chapter introduces military culture and guidelines for social media engagement, setting the stage for how soldiers are expected to utilize social media and some problems that can arise from it. The second chapter focuses on social interactivity across fronts, the sense of constant connection and immediate contact afforded to soldiers by social media in Iraq and Afghanistan. Chapter 3 examines US Marines’ digital photo album-making practices and how their social networks help soldiers in making meaning of their wartime deployments. In chapter 4 Silvestri considers how troops engage the values of the home front through the creation and dissemination of YouTube videos, suggesting that as the home-front attention to the Global War on Terrorism wanes, service members commandeer popular culture conversations to maintain relevance within the existing “attention economy.” Finally, in the conclusion, she takes a broader look at the narratives of war that troops tell about themselves and to each other, with a final optimistic take on the potential of social media and its impact on war in the digital age.

  Before turning to some of the most powerful insights gained from the book I wish to briefly outline the book’s methodology. Silvestri conducted a series of semi-structured, in-person interviews with US Marines who served in Iraq and Afghanistan on active bases (Pendleton, California and Okinawa, Japan). Building from her personal experience having a brother who served in Iraq, she utilizes a variety of mediums through which she interprets the complex interactions between the home front and war front mediated via social media. Each session was a private, forty-five-minute interview with junior Marines deployed between 2008 and 2012, as those years mark a critical flashpoint for the use of real-time social media software in Iraq and Afghanistan (p. 12). Additionally, she followed the Facebook pages of nine Marines over the course of their deployments, closely reading their wall posts, video posts, photo posts, and all the accompanying sidebar commentary. This drew her attention to the circulation patterns and processes of text production.

  Many in academia today are focused solely on their “research question” that forces interviews and text into neat “categories” that may or may not be accurate representations of social reality. However, Silvestri’s method allows an openness to what might be discovered through her interactions with soldiers. She notes: “When I first began online observations, I didn't know what I was looking for; I simply took it all in. But as I began to transcribe my interviews from Okinawa and eventually Pendleton, some of the Facebook activities I was observing … began to take on relevance. Throughout the interpretive process, interview conversations illuminated online observations and vice versa. Their interdependence is a genuine reflection of how my methodology unfolded” (p. 13). Ultimately, this interpretive process allows the possibility for the most accurate depiction of the mix of practices, representations, structures, rhetorics, and technologies that make up the complex interaction of the day-to-day lives of in combat and new social media technologies.

  Many of us tend to have an image of warfare based on Hollywood movies or videogames. What is enlightening about this book is that soldiers also view themselves through similar lenses. Thus, they often describe their time spent in Iraq or Afghanistan as boring, or repetitive, work. Many soldiers active on social media don’t post about some of the more rare but harsh realities of war, but seem almost as if they were on vacation, taking touristic type photos for friends and family back home. As one Marine put it, “We didn't really talk about the war experience much. Just how’s the weather. Small talk, pretty much. I don't know. It’s hard to explain” (p. 70).

  Here Silvestri captures the essence of the disjunction between Marines' expectations of what war “is” and their day-to-day interactions with the home front, discussing the weather and posting vacation-like photos. On the one hand the interviews suggested that soldiers expect “war” to be like they see in the movies, with intense battles and moments of “sheer terror.” Thus, they often film their own footage of daily life almost morbidly hoping something “war-like” will occur. Nevertheless, the image they present on social media can at times be more like that of vacationing in Afghanistan or Iraq, posting photos with friends, sights, and scenery. Soldiers for whom the war is an aspect of daily life, act and often feel as if they were not engaged in “real war.” That is not to say that do not experience “real war” but it is often not how they imagined it to be, and when they share their experiences on Facebook, they rarely use the term “war.”

  Silvestri also theorizes about the impact that the prevalence of war language in everyday social media interactions—for example, the wars on drugs, poverty, Christmas, women, etc.--has on the public as a whole. Most importantly she argues that it creates a sense of war as mundane instead of extraordinary, that risks the loss of war’s distinction. Her goal is to keep war out of the ordinary and remind her readers that although the lines between the war front and the home front are increasingly blurred, war remains something distinctly extraordinary. Ultimately the narrative of war is changing and social media contributes to a feeling of routine in an already perpetual war, where “war consists both of firefights and friend requests” (p. 17).

  Soldiers’ personal photos from the field have become a feature of contemporary warfare. Several Marines said that they utilize the extra grenade pouch on their flack jackets to hold their digital cameras. In what is perhaps the most fascinating chapter of the book, Silvestri analyzes a number of photos posted by Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, using a number of communication, media, and social theories to interpret their significance. While a majority of the photos were like those of any other Facebook user—a selfie, posing with friends, casually hanging out or goofing off—nearly half were “moto photos.” Moto photos are, according to one Marine sergeant, “any picture of you in gear looking badass,” where weapons are the central focus of the photo as opposed to the “buddy pose” (p. 98).

  Silvestri found that the moto photos are not for civilian audiences, but for “the personnel themselves to verify and authenticate their war experiences” (p. 104). If there is any doubt that their experiences in Iraq or Afghanistan are authentic, these images provide reassurance that what they are doing looks like “war” as our popular imaginings from films and videogames would have it. The photos themselves ended up being a kind of self-reflection for many, as one Marine recognized that his desire to take and post photos came from the idea “of knowing you are part of history and you’re trying to piece it together as you go” (p. 108).

  Beyond enabling sodiers to be in contact with friends and family back home, social media has allowed them to help in individual and collective meaning making between what war was for them and how they thought it should have been. Ultimately, this demonstrates the complexities of contemporary war. On the one hand many interviewees felt that mainstream news was an exaggerated version of their experiences, focusing on frontline conflict whereas much of deployment is the everyday experiences and “the good stuff” like building schools, which several Marines cited as their favorite deployment memories (p. 116). In the end, this book is a must-read for soldiers, scholars, policymakers, and citizens who would like to gain insight into the impact of social media in contemporary conflict and how the lines between the home front and the war front are becoming ever more blurred.

  Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=45832

  Citation: John Emery. Review of Silvestri, Lisa Ellen, Friended at the Front: Social Media in the American War Zone. H-War, H-Net Reviews. November, 2016.
  URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=45832

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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• Michigan War Studies Review
  http://www.miwsr.com/2017-012.aspx
  Word count: 1266

  2017-01216 Feb. 2017
  Review by Kelly McHugh, Florida Southern College
  Friended at the Front: Social Media in the American War Zone
  By Lisa Ellen Silvestri
  Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 2016. Pp. xv, 239. ISBN 978–0–7006–2136–1.
  Descriptors: Volume 2017, 21st Century, Iraq, Afghanistan Print Version
  In Friended at the Front, Lisa Ellen Silvestri (Gonzaga College), a specialist in communications studies, tackles a familiar topic—the use of social media by people in their twenties—but in an unfamiliar arena: the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. This subject has received scant scholarly attention. In the introduction, she asks

  What challenges do military personnel face as they negotiate the institutional and cultural expectations for social media use? How do they communicate their deployment experiences, if at all, with social network members? What discourses do they draw from in order to sustain conversations across multiple publics and collective audiences? When, why, how, and to whom are particular utterances intelligible? (13)
  To address these questions, Silvestri employs the concept of "technological agency," which

  neither reduces technologies to what humans designed them to do nor claims agency for the technology itself. To be sure, there are values built into technologies, but they do not determine use of these technologies. They do, however, constrain those uses…. Supposing that human behavior changes to suit new technologies' forms and processes, the very act of using Facebook generates patterns of activities that soon become second nature. (5)
  The body of the book consists of four case-studies, each essentially a fascinating stand-alone essay. Chapter 1, "Incongruities across Social Media and Military Cultures," concerns the regulation of social media usage by the Department of Defense. Three succeeding chapters—"From Posting Mail to Posting Status," "Photos from the Field," and "Marine Corps Video Memes"—discuss, respectively, posting on Facebook, creating Facebook photo albums, and creating and sharing internet "memes" or viral videos. (The chapter on Internet memes is the least effective in the volume. Apart from several humorous examples of viral videos created by active-duty Marines, it has little relevance to the broader themes of the book.) Silvestri finds that social media are fast evolving and democratic in nature and have profoundly affected the deployment experiences of US military personnel. Beyond that, they also shape the broader public's understanding of what it means for the United States to be "at war."

  Silvestri adopted a two-pronged approach to her research: first, she conducted three sets of on-base interviews with Marines following their deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan, particularly in the period 2008–12, when social media use became commonplace among military personnel. To supplement these interviews, she did "online fieldwork," analyzing the Facebook pages of nine Marines.

  The author acknowledges that her sample size is small, relative to the number of troops who served overseas. Nonetheless, she has found evidence that social media have transformed their experience of war, not always for the better.

  The widespread use of personal computers, internet accessibility, and the proliferation of social network sites pose fundamental challenges to the maintenance of dualities between work and leisure. When communication takes place over non-physical networks, it complicates distinctions between work and home as well as the social roles that go along with them. Applying these ideas to U.S. troops in a theater of war significantly raises the stakes for these types of dilemmas. (6)
  Specifically, soldiers who used social media were "tethered to the home front" in an unparalleled way; in previous conflicts, communication between the war zone and home had been sporadic and one-sided. While all the Marines Silvestri interviewed appreciated their ability to connect in real-time with their loved ones, this also involved them in the everyday challenges faced by their families back home: worries over sick children, home repairs, or family disputes increased the daily stresses borne by the Marines. One who served in Afghanistan told Silvestri that his frequent Facebook use made him feel he had "one foot over there and one here" (45).

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  at Amazon to support MiWSR
  Silvestri explores this dynamic most fully in chapter 3, which contrasts present-day Marines' communications with those of soldiers in past wars, who communicated mainly by handwritten letters. She finds that, in the era of social media, frequency of contact has replaced depth of contact (68). The messages the Marines posted to Facebook tended to be prosaic; the perceived obligation to post frequently left them describing the weather, food, and humorous occurrences. By contrast, letters written during past wars, which took weeks or months to reach their recipients, were often emotionally rich and focused only on significant events that had occurred on the home front.

  Since social media not only facilitate communications among individuals, but also make them public, Silvestri considers the "audience" impact of the social media activity of military personnel. She notes that the Pentagon has attempted to regulate social media use by active duty personnel, fearing that a "nightmare reader" (enemy operative) might mine soldiers' Facebook feeds to gain intelligence.

  In her interviews, however, Silvestri found that the Marines were more concerned about hiding wartime images, not from the enemy, but from their loved ones. Many of them engaged in self-censorship when posting on Facebook to avoid alarming family and friends with images of violence, carnage, and danger. Thus their photos and messages often reported on day-to-day life on their bases, offering a sanitized "social media-friendly version of war—shiny happy people holding guns" (161).

  Finally, the author considers how members of the military use social media to make sense of their combat experiences. The young Marines she encountered were struggling to grasp their role in a new kind of war, which looked nothing like past conflicts they knew of. In fact, she found, "Marines rarely used the term 'war' as a frame of reference for their deployments. Instead, they invoked discourses associated with everyday life and used 'war' to describe specific moments during their deployments" (163). In effect, the Marines were generating content that, while publically accessible, was meant for their fellow soldiers.

  One subset of such self-restricted communication was "motivational photographs," or "moto photos." These were usually variants of the sort of photographs taken before the advent of social media, depicting soldiers in combat poses, in full military gear, often holding weapons. Interestingly, Silvestri finds that the moto photos, which comprised over half the photos she examined, mimicked the aesthetics of popular combat-based videogames like "Call of Duty." She argues that the proliferation of these photos on Facebook, and the approving comments of their comrades, suggest that Marines in Afghanistan were seeking to "recreate the fiction of war in part for their social network audience and in part for themselves" (165).

  The book is written for an academic audience; it includes a detailed survey of pertinent literature in communication studies as well as many source citations and much technical jargon. It provides a well executed preliminary examination of the intersection of media studies and military history and opens several avenues for further research. In a time when a historically small percentage of Americans serve in the armed forces, accounts and images of war shared on Facebook now shape most civilians' conception of modern warfare.

  Lisa Silvestri's engaging prose style (jargon aside) will make Friended at the Front accessible to general readers and specialists curious about its subject. By studying twenty-first-century troops as technological agents, she forces her audience to consider the outsized role that social media play in both their lives and our own.

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