Marine Corps leaders can’t fix social media, but they can help

The Marines United scandal has uncovered some very dirty truths in the Marine Corps, and revealed that military leaders have a lot of work to do in fixing a culture that has enabled objectification and mistreatment of women, including women who proudly serve in the Corps. While USMC is not alone in having this problem—the other branches appear to have similar, if lesser, problems according to news reports—it is under the most powerful microscope this week.
 
At a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 14, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller talked about how Marines need to understand how to use social media responsibly. Today, the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing on military social media policies. While that’s only part of the problem, it’s something that I’m uniquely suited to address as the Community Manager for RallyPoint, the online network of more than one million service members and veterans.
 
{mosads}The fact is, no matter the cultural issues within the Corps, today’s social media platforms are imperfect communications tools that empower a lot of bad behavior. Too often, the anonymity, artificial privacy and lack of real-world relationships on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms encourages service members, veterans and other Americans to say and do whatever they about others, often forgetting how it negatively impacts their peers or complete strangers. 

So how do we positively influence what Marines—and all service members and veterans—say and share on social media? As RallyPoint’s Community Manager, I’m usually focused on encouraging personal and professional conversations, not halting them. Since we are a military community, I don’t discourage rough and tumble disputes—we do have more than 100,000 Marine Corps service members and veterans, after all—but we do expect and police basic levels of civility and respect.

Based on RallyPoint’s learning curve over five years, we have found that the keys to encouraging civil, respectful conversation among service members and veterans of all ages online are the following:
 
1) Reduce anonymity: Our users are more public about who they are than they might be on other sites. They are identified by their status as a service member or veteran, and are encouraged and incentivized to provide many details of their service. This spotlight on their real lives tends to make them far more civil and self-policing because their professional reputation and military honor is at stake.
 
2) Utilize real humans, not just technology, as moderators: Even as a technology driven social media site, we believe in the human touch. While we can’t and don’t want every conversation, on high-profile topics or major discussions, you will find me or one of 25 volunteer administrators–all service members and veterans–observing and stepping in to enforce and encourage civil dialogue and respect for others. It’s time consuming, but it creates trust and transparency that one’s reputation and opinion will be respected, even in strong disagreements. It’s not a coincidence that Google recently announced it will increase the use of human quality raters to improve the search results.
 
3) Break down impersonal barriers: There are times when the same social media blindness—the failure to realize you’ve violated real world social norms—appears on our platform. But that is rare, and stopped early, because our users are encouraged to view their conversations in the same way as they would real world conversations. Treat fellow RallyPoint members with respect, because they are real people, not punching bags or inanimate objects to attack or malign.
 
4) Do not tolerate misbehavior: As one of my volunteer administrators, a fellow Army Iraq veteran, recently posted in a RallyPoint conversation about Marines United’s nude photos and rape jokes: “if anyone suggested such an action here, they’d be shown the door ASAP.” That’s a simple, bottom line rule. We don’t tolerate the crap you’ll find on other platforms. The Corps has already updated its social media policy, but policies only work when they are accompanied by behavior change.
 
5) Prioritize dialogue in the public spaces: One of the fundamental challenges of Marines United is that it occurred in a supposedly private group, though one that leaked and had 30,000 members. We made a conscious decision with RallyPoint to make all conversations other that private messages to be public for all to see. Just like in the military, we don’t believe in encouraging private and secret conversations. We break down barriers—including rank, age and service—we don’t want to build them or encourage them.
 
I am not proposing a comprehensive fix. We are one platform out of several that service members rely on. But we have successfully created a community where people with military ties can converse about their personal and professional interests in a manner that does not cast shame on themselves or the military. It’s a starting point. We welcome anyone tired of other platforms to bring their military conversations to us. 
 
Culture change is the first and most important step the Marine Corps must take to ensure that its members are treated equally and fairly, regardless of gender. But we should not discount the importance of influencing how and where we communicate online as well.