CC BY
26
Viara Valtchanova Implications of cloud culture for communication management
The story you’re trying to tell in future conflicts is the strategy by which (the conflict) will be fought.
Col Robert Killebrew1
The media convergence that has developed in the past 15 years has been predominantly driven by the breath-taking pace of innovation in digital technology. The advent of the Internet and the ever proliferating spectrum of devices, interfaces and platforms has challenged communication theories and business models alike. The latest development — ‘cloud computing’ coupled with the roll-out of the next version of the Internet protocol (IPv6) represents a significant step in the evolution of the digital environment2. As Alec Ross, senior innovation adviser to former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton noted: "There is a massive shift in geopolitical power. It's from hierarchies, including government and big media. There's a shift in power to citizens and networks of citizens3”. Since Metcalfe’s Law posits that a network’s value increases exponentially with the number of nodes attached the synergy between those two developments is likely to represent a qualitative leap — IPv6 provides for an Internet of 2128 nodes compared to the present 232 with much of the data and applications residing in computer clouds. It should be noted however that even the biggest changes in IT have not led to the complete obsolescence of anything. IBM, for instance, is still making money with mainframes4 and ways have been found to integrate existent legacy systems into the newer infrastructure creating a massively complex digital environment.
Nevertheless, in the global context, where connectivity is paramount, participation vital and interdependence inevitable, ‘the cloud’ has already sparked some debates. It is a phenomenon still in its infancy, but even so it is showing its potential to have crucial implications for policy and communication management on the national and international
1 Col Robert Killebrew (Ret, director of Army TRADOC). Cited in Water T.J. Hyperformance: Using Competitive Intelligence for Better Strategy and Execution. San Francisco, 2010. P. 228.
2Goodman M, Khanna P. The Power of Moore’s Law in a World of Geotechnology 2 Jan 2013 // The National Interest. URL: nationalinterest.org/article/the-power-moores-law-world-geotechnology-7888 (Accessed: January 10 2013).
3Lee D. Governments will start 'lashing back' as internet grows // BBC News. 20 June 2012. URL: www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18527852 (Accessed: January 10 2013).
4Creating the cumulus. Software will be transformed into a combination of services // The Economist. URL: www.economist.com/node/12411908 (Accessed October 27, 2012).
level. In this highly complex context, the provocative question that prompted my analysis was: Is communication management in the ‘Cloud’ as viable as climate management?
In order to answer this question I will first define the central notions employed in the analysis: cloud computing and cloud culture, then offer a detailed look into the features of the emergent cloud culture (including some of its darker aspects, focusing on security) and then offer a series of conceptual and practical implications for communication management practitioners. What has become clear to me both in my analysis and in my professional dealing with the subject is that more agile and integrative communication management approaches are called for in this new environment.
Cloud computing
Although the so called ‘Digital Divide’ is still a major barrier to participation for large proportions of the world’s population, the pace of innovation, lowering costs and international efforts5 are likely to continue delivering wider access to a convergent media-scape: from radio talk-show call-ins via mobile phones giving a voice to women in Afghanistan to Ushahidi testifying of violence in Kenya and supporting relief efforts in Haiti, Chile and Japan in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.
Just a couple of years ago the next big thing was ‘mobile’. Today, arguably, it’s the Cloud. The rapid spread of ever-cheaper mobile access to the Internet, I’d argue, is also feeding the advent of the Cloud. It allows for a qualitative leap. By Cisco forecasts, wi-fi will exceed wired connections in terms of amount of data carried by 2015. The report also projects that 40% of the global population — i.e. most of the active workforce will be online within the same period6. Where phone-lines and related infrastructure never existed — 3G and 4G networks will provide access. How does cloud computing, or cloud culture relate to those developments? Is it just the new buzz word for the season or does it really have some substance?
Before I turn to arguing that cloud culture is an actual phenomenon whose nascent features are already discernible, I’d like to offer some more background on the technology driving these developments. Although the title suggests a unified phenomenon, the evolving reality is that cloud environments have proliferated and are likely to keep morphing. Commercial, private, open, hybrid, government — all these have been attributed to clouds recently. The definitions available at the moment are mostly focusing on the technology
5Talbot D. Given Tablets, but No Teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves // MIT Technology Review.
29 October 2012. URL: www.technologyreview.com/news/506466/given-tablets-but-no-teachers-ethiopian-children-teach-themselves/ (Accessed: November 15, 2012).
6Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2012-2017 // Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO). URL: www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-520862.html (Accessed: January 30 2013).
involved — infrastructure and services. The two main words most often associated with the Cloud are ‘utility’ and ‘simple’.
Some definitions to begin with
As a metaphor for the Internet, "the cloud" is a familiar cliche, but when combined with "computing", the meaning gets bigger and more complex7. The main difference observable now is that while the metaphor is still somewhat useful when talking about things online, cloud computing is very much a hard and wired reality today and is fast becoming the chief enabler of all things digitally connected — not merely people and their devices, but also things, like airport check-in systems and car computers.
In Cloud Computing, users rely on data and software that both reside on the Internet. Typical applications include Google Apps for word processing, virtual worlds such as Second Life that enable users to build three dimensional environments, and grid computing to resolve Big Data challenges. Cloud computing has the potential to be widely adopted because it can reduce the cost and the power required to do routine computing tasks and computationally intensive research problems, foster collaboration, and dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of developing new applications. Without the economies of scale enabled by Cloud computing, it will be increasingly difficult to deal with growing data and traffic volumes8. For the purposes of this article, the ‘Internet of Things’ will be left out of the analysis, but it constitutes an important aspect of both IPv6 and cloud computing development.
The five essential characteristics of cloud computing are: on-demand service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service9, while the service models associated with it are likely to multiply, at least three are already well established — software as a service, platform as a service and infrastructure as a service.
Thus, computing, software and other services become much like a utility, similar to electricity. It should be noted that while new, this utility builds on the existence of others — primarily — electricity, which is still not readily available to more than 20% of the world’s population. Access to mobile devices has been growing exponentially in recent years, with
2012 seeing video traffic via mobile devices exceed 50% of traffic world-wide, but despite the exponential growth in available bandwidth and users, the power-supply limitation applies to them as well.
7 Miller R. What’s in a Name? Utility vs. Cloud vs. Grid // Data Center Knowledge (DCK). 25 March 2008. URL: www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/03/25/whats-in-a-name-utility-vs-cloud-vs-grid/
(Accessed: November 1, 2013).
8Nelson M. R. Building an Open Cloud // Science. №324. 2009. P.1656-1657.
9Scavo F. Cutting through the fog of cloud computing definitions // The Enterprise System Spectator. URL: fscavo.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/cutting-through-fog-of-cloud-computing.html (Accessed December 1, 2012).
There are other obstacles to the rapid adoption of clouds too. The inertia of businesses, ownership habits and intra-organizational turf-wars as well as anxieties in respect of privacy protection and security are among the more prominent ones that are likely to be resolved in a piece-meal and uneven manner. The privacy and security issues are unlikely to be resolved altogether, but merely mitigated against.
However, cloud computing, according to both critics and endorsers, is the next phase in the development of the Internet, after technological capacity outgrows the current stage of Web 2.010. It’s a new stage in the evolution of the digital habitat that has already gone beyond ubiquitous computing. It is becoming ever more inextricable in our daily lives and in some ways — organic.
It is a mere observation to say that in developed countries daily life is increasingly digital media-rich. Somehow, even when it seems that some sort of saturation point has been reached — some new social media platform emerges that offers something new and finds its place across multiple connected devices. In this context it is sometimes easy to forget that digital things, media in particular, are means and not ends. Therefore, I’d argue that all the focusing on the current technicalities of cloud computing is taking a limited view. It could well be the next phase technologically, but the wider culture it is forging and enabling is in my view the more interesting development with significant implications for communication management.
But what are the features of this new culture and is it new at all? I would suggest it would be useful to develop such a notion and that there is sufficient ground to introduce it. Firstly, because communication management practitioners would benefit from a more coherent conceptual development of their emergent operating environment and taking a strategic view. Secondly, because much of the traditional notions and practices do not take into account the integrated, almost organic way technology, content and interaction take place in a constantly connected world. For example, focusing on social media, which has become popular of late, often misses the interplay between different social media, traditional media and real-world effects. While focusing on the potential of these particular Web-enabled media and the tools being developed to harness them, one risks losing sight of how context-dependent and rather volatile this particular type of media are. For example, the quantitative exploration through automated tools does not allow for sarcasm, which tends to be prominent online nor does it take into account various exploits like bots merely retranslating a link or message often to limited or no audience. I will return to this point further down to offer insights of my personal experience in that area while working as a senior real-time analyst with the London2012 Transport Demand Management team.
10Cloud Computing Takes Off. Market Set to Boom as Migration Accelerates // Morgan Stanley. 23 May 2011. URL: www.morganstanley.com/views/.../cloud_computing.pdf (Accessed: December 3, 2012).
When trying to outline the features of cloud culture there is a fundamental observation that needs to be taken into account first. The way Internet architecture has evolved has to an extent leveled the playing field and increasingly netizens demand interaction and to be heard. They have also demonstrated that real-world effects can be achieved via online activism, for instance by putting effective pressure on politicians in the USA to change their position and oppose the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) legislation in 2012, sponsored by powerful copyright lobbies, leading to it being dropped altogether11.
In a nutshell, the Internet is a subversive, resistance medium12, where governments and other traditional major players like corporations, have seemingly little control over the narrative, apart from cutting off network access altogether. The latter approach was tried by both Egypt during the revolution and Syria more recently, but proved unsustainable as the network is as vital to the functioning of the state as it is to opposition movements promoting their messaging. I will turn to the security implications of the actual architecture in the next section, but what is becoming clearer is that "as power is shifting from hierarchies to citizens, and networks of citizens, governments tend to feel overwhelmed" and efforts to counter that situation are likely to increase in the near future13.
The notion of cloud culture was first proposed by Charles Leadbeater in 2010, in his booklet of the same title14, published by the British Council. Much of that work was devoted to the political implications of the emergent cloud environment, which is understandable in light of that fact that MrLeadbeater used to be innovation advisor to Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair. The concept has not received much scholarly attention since, but it can be argued that the notion itself will prove useful in conceptualizing the digital habitat that communication managers are facing today and will increasingly face in the future.
The potential characteristic features of cloud culture are likely to include, but not limited to15:
- increased space and tools for collaboration;
- even lower costs of entry and participation;
11 Staff Ars. Week in tech: SOPA defeated, Megaupload taken down. // Ars Technica. 21 January 2012. URL: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/week-in-tech-sopa-defeated-megaupload-taken-down/ (Accessed: February 3, 2013).
12Denning D. E. Activism, Hacktivism, and Cyberterrorism: The Internet as a Tool for Influencing Foreign Policy // Internet and International Systems: Information Technology and American Foreign Policy Decisionmaking Workshop. URL: oldsite.nautilus.org/archives/info-policy/workshop/papers/denning.html
(Accessed: January 7 2013).
13Lee D. Governments will start 'lashing back' as internet grows // BBC News. 20 June 2012. URL: www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18527852 (Accessed: January 10 2013).
14Leadbeater C. Cloud Culture: the future of global cultural relations // British Council URL: www.britishcouncil.org/russia-projects-cultural-creative-economy-useful-resources-cloudculturecharlesleadbeater (Accessed: October 30, 2012).
15Ibid. P. 24.
- ever greater scope for creativity, enabled by easy-to-use, compatible and modular services, customizable tools and devices. Consumers will be more able to be producers with the lowering of technical complexity. Some software development tools already allow even non-geek users to create their own programs. Various mash-ups of existing tools, e.g. Google Maps and social networks, like Ushahidi are only an early indication of what is possible;
- in our seemingly less ideological age, the incessant connection via cloud between individuals, communities and nations could foster more productive engagement through culture. The experiment ‘Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds’ run by Digital Ink Productions16 a couple of years ago, proved that such approaches allow for more reasonable and honest trans-cultural engagements even on highly sensitive issues;
- challenging modes of data ownership and potentially increased threat surface and vulnerability in respect of both privacy and cyber-intrusions with criminal or terrorist intent17.
While the emergent cloud culture seems largely shaped by technological innovations and cumulative user practices still, it could be argued that the larger development debate it is likely to generate internally will be guided by issues of trust, community and responsibility. The first proposal for a Cloud Computing ‘Bill of Rights’ came as early as 2008 and is continuously evolving through a collaborative effort, occasionally making headlines since then. It seeks to establish a model for the cloud where there are clear lines of responsibility and accountability so that both users and vendors get a fair deal. As of 2013, this proposal has not received actual legislative attention with nation-states experimenting with their own pieces of legislation, but the intention behind it is much more adequate to the emergent transnational culture than such state-focused initiatives. The Cloud Computing Manifesto, another attempt at making sense of cloud spaces, explicitly addresses ‘the worldwide’ cloud community. Whether ordinary users of synchronized digital devices, whose data resides and is manipulated in the cloud, feel part of this community is surely open to discussion, but by their everyday behavior they are contributing to the continuing development of cloud culture.
Clouds, Personal security and defending the digital commons
Currently, debates of cybersecurity are gaining more and more attention. National strategies are being devised and international proposals made (eg the e-G8 Summit). In this
l6Fouts J. Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds // The Imagination Age. URL: www.theimaginationage.net/2009/01/understanding-islam-through-virtual.html (Accessed: October 30 2012).
17Leadbeater C. Op. cit. P. 61.
respect, clouds also pose a significant challenge. If — or more likely — when they become ‘the centre of our digital lives’, as Steve Jobs put it, will they become another layer of what security professionals call ‘critical infrastructure’? What jurisdictions apply and who will be ultimately responsible for protecting these morphing clouds?
Even in this seemingly uncontrollable, emergent environment, governments and people can act and effect change. The effective pressure the US government put on hosting providers to abandon Wikileaks in the wake of the Cablegate release is just one example. The retaliatory attack by Anonymous and consequent attacks on US government security contractor HBGary is another.
Nonetheless, notions such as ‘full spectrum domination’, a common staple in military and government doctrines that has come to incorporate cyberspace, are in my view counterproductive. As one expert summarizes the situation, “attempts to transfer policy constructs from other forms of warfare will not only fail but also hinder policy and planning”18. The present inability to craft adequate and effective security and legal policies in this domain, largely due to politician’s lack of understanding of the domain, is among the major challenges facing the development of cloud culture.
Hacktivists (hacker activists) are a useful demonstration of the more ambiguous aspects of cloud culture, but is also an innovation driver for users worldwide, including people living in countries who are attempting to suppress the online freedoms of their citizens. The movement started with the sole aim to promote human rights and target abusers back in the 1980s with the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc), a hacker group that coined the word "hacktivist19." Hacktivism includes electronic civil disobedience, which brings methods of civil disobedience to cyberspace20. One collective has become particularly prominent of late — Anonymous. Trying to characterize Anonymous is tricky — it's more an identity than a group. But as an umbrella movement, Anonymous has many off-shoots and rival factions, many with very different ideas
about operations and tactics. For instance, some support distributed denial of service (DDoS)
attacks; others don’t21. Even their self-proclaimed public spokesperson announced he is leaving the group in 2011 due to strategic differences with others within the movement22.
18Nye J. S. The Future of Power. New York, 2011. P. 125.
19Allnutt L. Old-School Hacker Oxblood Ruffin Discusses Anonymous and the Future of Hacktivism // Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. URL:
www.rferl.org/content/hacker_oxblood_ruffin_discusses_anonymous_and_the_future_of_hacktivism/24228166. html (Accessed: December 12, 2012).
20Denning D. E. Activism, Hacktivism, and Cyberterrorism: The Internet as a Tool for Influencing Foreign Policy // Internet and International Systems: Information Technology and American Foreign Policy Decisionmaking Workshop. URL: oldsite.nautilus.org/archives/info-policy/workshop/papers/denning.html
(Accessed: January 7, 2013).
21 Allnutt L. Op. cit.
22Anderson N. Prolific “spokesman” for Anonymous leaves the hacker group // Ars Technica. 19 May 2011.
Anonymous became globally famous in 2010 after it sought to punish companies that severed ties with WikiLeaks. After Wikileaks was dropped by EveryDNS hosting, and the Amazon cloud, where Wikileaks was temporarily hosted — both services came under a massive DDoS attack. PayPal, Visa and MasterCard also suffered after refusing to process payments for Wikileaks. They have recently announced support for their Iranian chapter for disruptive attacks around the time of the elections’ violence anniversary. International law enforcement agencies in Europe and the U.S. are continually investigating Anonymous, several arrests have been made, but the activities of the group have not been disrupted and its tools are likely to evolve to prevent further arrests.
Hacktivism has potential to be disruptive, but ultimately not significantly destructive (for the time being at least).Destruction most often occurs when the intruders try to hide their trails. In any case, the unintended and incalculable consequences of individual action can create a compound threat and clouds will not be able to avoid that regardless of the precautions taken. One of the latest large-scale attacks on US banks for example used hijacked cloud capacity instead of the more traditional botnets23. This first known demonstration of such an attack is an ominous omen of things to come, but is also likely to provide incentive for better communication and development of protection policies. However, complexity and fallibility rule the cyber-world and a digital analogue of the butterfly effect would not be an overstatement. In the virtual world, actors are diverse, often anonymous, physical distance is immaterial, attribution of attacks far from perfect, and a single virtual offense is almost cost free.
Another ambiguous aspect of cloud culture is the use of the media and infrastructure by extremists. Much has been written for jihadist online presence24 and I wouldn’t like to go into too much detail. It’s a curious coincidence that Al-Qaida’s main media production house is called As Sahab — meaning — the Cloud. In a way, it already exhibits some of the features of a menacingly purposeful use of cloud computing. It merges propaganda, narrative development, community management and communications and collaboration. Other criminal and terrorist organizations are also likely to try to exploit the versatility, scalability and ease of access of the clouds in the near term. Still, although these environments will make it easier for rogue elements to try to hide, the same infrastructure and architecture will also provide Governments and law enforcement agencies with more powerful tools to pursue them. In terms of capability,
URL: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/05/why-anonymous-spokesman-is-leaving-the-group/ (Accessed:
January 20, 2013).
23Kelley M., Ingersol G. Cloud Computing Has Officially Brought the Global Cyberwar to the US Doorstep // Business Insider. URL: www.businessinsider.com/cloud-computing-brings-cyber-warfare-to-us-2013-1
(Accessed February 1, 2013).
24Musawi M. A. Cheering for Osama: How Jihadists Use Internet Discussion Forums // Quilliam Foundation. URL: www.quilliamfoundation.org/press-releases/new-quilliam-report-cheering-for-osama-how-jihadists-use-
internet-discussion-forums/ (Accessed: February 27, 2013).
jihadists, particularly Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have in the last couple of years started to focus their attention on cyber-operations. As far as is known, it is not among their top priorities at the moment, but reportedly it remains an aspiration.
Particularly in the wake of the Stuxnet worm, vulnerabilities in our ever more interconnected critical infrastructure targets — among which the clouds might be counted in the not too distant future, have become more obvious and thus more lucrative. In the present tumultuous context — with the consequences of the Arab Spring and the death of Osama bin Laden still unclear, such appetites could increase. Thus, given the relatively big talent pool, if such groups decide to develop a capability to attack vital systems, like SCADA, they might as well be successful in the medium term. Since attribution will be difficult, improved defenses such as pre-emption and human intelligence become important. If they take up cloud-based tools for collaboration, even though hiding is easier, the controversial scope for monitoring is also larger. Such a scenario has implications for communications managements since the ‘war of ideas’ that is arguably taking place today, is mostly a struggle of legitimacy of narratives. In the context of increasingly militarized cyber-security, communications management is likely to become and ever more crucial element of both domestic and international policymaking, particularly in the security domain.
In addition, given the perceived ease-of-use and consolidation of data the clouds seem to forge, it is easy to foresee that espionage, intelligence and covert are likely to continue increasing and widening in scope. They will be conducted both by Governments and private corporations — on both friendly and enemy targets. As Churchill famously said and Obama echoed in his Nobel Prize speech — in total war the lines between military and civilian become blurred. However, the current state of policy is troubling. The forthcoming US Cyberstrategy makes the case for kinetic response to cyber attacks if they are deemed serious enough. True, the cyber information layer rests upon a physical infrastructure that is vulnerable to direct attack or sabotage both by governments and non state actors. Servers can be blown up and cables can be cut. But such a position is somewhat in conflict with other US internet-related strategies and gives too much weight to straightforward retaliation that might prove impossible given the difficulties of attribution. Redundancy, resilience and quick reconstitution are a more effective set of responses to the existing and emerging threats to national and international infrastructure.
Control would seem ever more elusive, unless the fundamental architecture of the Internet is changed, which at present is highly unlikely and is almost inconceivable in terms of scale and complexity. Partial amendments are already pursued, as in the IPv6, but governments have limited influence over the standard setting bodies. So parallel networks,
isolated from the big pool are an option, but they are very expensive and time-consuming, so not many will be able to afford them and thus, more asymmetry would be created. This is unlikely to occur in the next 5-10 years on a global scale, but is already happening in some places. Still, reliance on the Internet and clouds for much of functionality (due to very low cost) impedes such efforts at present.
Because the Internet was designed for ease of use rather than security, the offense currently has the advantage over the defense. And, I’d argue, it is precisely the obsession with control and ‘simple’, effortless solutions that drives companies, advertising — and ultimately adoption and consumption. Our collective wish for an altogether simpler digital life (very much promised by cloud providers) in contrast to messy reality, is one of the chief drivers in the evolution of the clouds. Somewhat paradoxically, it also feeds the increasing complexity of the digital habitat, blurs many lines and leaves both communications managers and policymakers somewhat disoriented. Much like real low-hanging clouds, also known as fog.
Implications for communications management
In that complex context effective communications management seems to become ever more elusive, both for professionals and in a way — individuals as they strive to manage their personal digital personae across services. Moreover, the exponential pace of innovation and proliferation of devices and services overtake public debate and policy making time and again, sometimes reducing them to highly agitated emotional responses to a crisis with little understanding or actual productive debate.
The complexities that this emerging environment creates or exacerbates challenge existing models of communications management. So the questions practitioners will need to ask will have to change: How do we get the right message (in terms of content, packaging, delivery, targets) is no longer an effective starting position. Rather, a first step will have to be to seek to understand what kind of reality has the community that we intend to address constructed for itself25.
When devising communication management strategies for clouds, it is important to consider the social aspect of communication, namely that it is an ongoing narrative process of sense-making. Practitioners on the government side will do well to look to the commercial sector. It provides a helpful reminder that regardless of means, our societies today exist within an environment where influence and persuasion are routine experience26. Still, the objectives that commercial actors pursue in their communication strategies tend to be much more limited
25Corman SR., Trethewey A., Goodall B. A 21st Century Model for Communication in the Global War of Ideas, From Simplistic Influence to Pragmatic Complexity. April 3, 2007. Report #0701. Consortium for Strategic Communication, Arizona State University. P. 9.
26Ibidem. P. 11.
and with a different set of legitimacy and perception issues than those on the government/international organization side, so while some insights might be beneficial, the true significance of studying the commercial sector lies in understanding how it creates much of the context within which communication managers on the government side will be working.
On a more practical level, several interrelated characteristics of online communication present a particular challenge for communication management practitioners
— information overload, information longevity and real-time communication. Information overload is the prime challenge faced by users and those seeking to influence their behavior
— users are faced with a volume of information unprecedented in recorded history. While the proliferation of web-enabled services that require our attention continues, practitioners are in a situation where there is no guarantee that their target audience is paying attention to whatever they are trying to communicate to them. The mere indication of number of Twitter follower or ‘likes’ on Facebook for example are not useful indicators due to the nature of the services — constantly refreshing streams of items. The sheer amount of ‘noise’, to borrow Claude Shannon’s classical term, creates a highly competitive environment where the prize is the netizen’s time, attention and interaction. Not to mention that sometimes governments devise deliberate strategies to deny access or actively destroy online discourse by flooding it and polluting it with abusive commentators to the point where ordinary participants simply left the conversations altogether27.
One way to address this issue is to identify problems that is highly relevant to the target audience and offer a perspective or invite comment thus framing a narrative and then manage the conversation in such a way that the number of participant grow quickly. This is one way to gain traction in the cloud since Moore’s law applies to that aspect too — the more people (nodes) in the network of the conversation one initiates — potentially the greater the perceived value of interaction with it. And even if the actual content of opinions turns out not to be of much value to the communication manager, the very fact that there is a large conversation occurring creates an opportunity for a positive feedback loop — where the mainstream media will recognize it as significant, prolong its longevity — an issue in its own right that will be addressed next — and harness the interaction between the cloud and real-world networks, which is the best chance a communication manager has to achieve real-world effects.
Information longevity is a closely related and rather challenging issue for communication managers in the cloud. On the one hand — once something is online — it stays
27The case of Bahrain‘s dealing with online allegations of repression is the most clear to date of a government employing such tactics, details in Lynch M. Twitter Devolutions // Foreign Policy. URL: www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/07/twitter_devolutions_arab_spring_social_media?page=full (Accessed February 7, 2013).
online ‘forever’, i.e. it is almost impossible to be deleted altogether once it has begun propagating in the cloud. On the other hand, however, a study by the link tracking organization “bit.ly” in 2011 indicated that the “half-life” of a link posted in social media is very short. An internet half-life, defined as the time by which a link will receive half the total clicks of its existence is approximately 3 hours, while YouTube links tend to last for about 7. While some of this may be again attributed to the constantly-refreshing nature of the particular platforms studied, Bit.ly proposes that the content of the link itself, as opposed to the medium, has the bigger impact on longevity, as indicated by the wide variance in the lifespans of the links used in its sample study28. This observation offers both a potentially fruitful approach and scope for further study. If content is the leading factors, then communication managers should study potential ‘seed’ words. Some initial research has indicated that there is scope for seeding in the digital cloud, just like cloud seeding has been employed for meteorological purposes. It seems that certain types of intervention are able to precipitate an increase in productive interaction and vice versa29. While this is unlikely to produce hard and fast rules for practitioners, further study of content seeds and triggers is likely to offer some tentative insights. For good or ill, like so many things in the cloud, solutions are always temporary and hard to come by, but that feature only exacerbates the need for deeper study of online content as well as broader social and media awareness among practitioners.
Real-time interaction is another aspect of communication in the cloud that is interrelated with those already mentioned. For strategic communicators both on the government and the business side this is one of the most difficult circles to square. Clearance procedures in existence are inadequate to requirements of timely response and interaction30 and are often the result of compromise between different parts of an organization vying for control over the message. Thus the rapid response required by the environment becomes a significant vulnerability for the communication policy. On the one hand, any delay in responding will be perceived as being irresponsive or elitist and might give one visibility for all the wrong reasons, while on the other — an employee charged with responding and providing a quick response might inadvertently compromise the whole effort with a response that veers off the agreed-upon strategy. Therefore, the room for considering second- and third-order effects that could potentially boomerang and undermine an otherwise sound communication strategy is shrunk to
28Bit.ly. “You Just Shared a Link. How Long Will People Pay Attention?” // Bitly Blog. 2011. September 6. URL: blog.bitly.com/post/9887686919/you-just-shared-a-link-how-long-will-people-pay (Accessed November 13 2012).
29Velasquez A. Social media and online political discussion: The effect of cues and informational cascades on participation in online political communities // New Media & Society. December 2012. Vol. 14. No. 8. P. 1.
30 Wallin M. The Challenges of the Internet and Social Media in Public Diplomacy // American Security Project report. February 2013. URL: americansecurityproject.org/featured-items/2013/the-challenges-of-the-internet-and-social-media-in-public-diplomacy/ (Accessed: February 5, 2013).
mess than 24 hours or in some instances less than an hour. While that may seem like a scary proposition and this vulnerability is unlikely to ever be addressed fully, efforts to have train teams in greater awareness as well as crafting different scenarios on a regular basis can increase the overall resilience of the communication strategy.
My personal experience as a senior social media analyst embedded with the GetAheadOfTheGames/Transport Demand Management team during the Olympics and Paralympics in London gave me an inside perspective of just how complex, but also effective an integrated communication management campaign can be. With a clear policy goal from the outset, a well-designed on and off-line media messaging and real-time engagement a lot can be achieved. The London 2012 Games were also called ‘the first social media Olympics’31 and provided and excellent case study into communication management in the cloud. Both Londoners and visitors interacted with the official entity perceived to be responsible for everything London2012 — the GetAheadOfTheGames handle on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere online. The way my team at first approached the challenge of collecting and analyzing information in a time-frame as close to real-time as possible, involved employing an automated collection platform with elaborate search-terms. However, this technology — and even though I am not going to name the one we used, that is an issue shared by all — failed in producing meaningful collection — there was too much noise and it kept coming up with ‘reports’ that were in no way helpful to our main analytical effort — to grasp as quickly as possible when and where problems might arise as well as to find out how people are experiencing and evaluating their travel. While it is true that what was asked of the analysis often changed, the very limited reaction-time sometimes lead to neglecting automated collection and doing it manually. Often, issues not picked up were turning out to be significant. On a few occasions the analysis also provided foresight. However, reactions to reporting also showed how uncomfortable feedback made some feel — both on the commercial and the government side. What is more, the sarcasm and often irreverent comments were not well received. Sarcasm, snark and trolling are common in the cloud as the environment promotes such behavior. But such things are incomprehensible for automated tools. The other aspect that turned out to be confusing for the system were bots32 — automated algorithms that pick up things based on key words or traffic volume and simply retranslate them to virtually no one since they are not real users and have no networks of their own. When will automated platforms be able to control for such social intricacies is not yet
31Lee D. Governments will start 'lashing back' as internet grows // BBC News. 20 June 2012. URL: www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18527852 (Accessed: January 10 2013).
32Polleschi I. Busted: Half Of These Companies' Twitter Followers Are Bots // Business Insider. URL: www.businessinsider.com/busted-half-of-these-companies-twitter-followers-are-bots-2012-6 (Accessed October 30, 2012).
clear, so the main conclusion for communication managers that can be drawn from this is that while engagement in the cloud seems cheap, efficient and easy that is entirely deceptive. As a matter of fact, the success of GetAheadOfTheGames in achieving its intended real-world effects relied heavily on people — consulting businesses in the lead up to the Games, volunteers throughout the city providing guidance to visitors and Londoners alike. It also showed that a saturation approach, employing a coherent and consistent whole-of-government approach, while it definitely was annoying for pretty much everyone involved, delivered. Of course, there were allegations of using ‘scare tactics’ or overestimating the problem, but the campaign was so successful where so many before had failed that criticisms remained confined to certain corners. Thus, another lesson for communication managers might be that engaging in the cloud and achieving real-world effects depends to a large extent on having on board enough good people with a broad enough perspective on pertinent issues so that they would be able to operate agilely in a highly-dynamic environment.
In addition, online communities have often been seen to function as echo chambers for their members. Thus, communication strategies will have to disrupt those systems and their meaning-making frameworks in order to nudge participants in a direction where the context will be more favorable to the messages that are to be conveyed. Overcoming the communities’ tendency to interpret things in their standard ways becomes a chief task for communication management practitioners. This is particularly true in conflict situations and in respect of sensitive/controversial issues33.
The relationships that will have to be established are mutually interdependent and people increasingly expect to be engaged with. If communication professionals have learnt anything in recent years, it is that the bar for their work has been raised considerably. It is not just citizen journalism and proliferating corrosive conspiracy theories of all sorts34 that I have in mind here. It is also the audience expectations in every interaction to be treated as somewhat equal partners, not to be lectured to. Moreover, the communities practitioners will be trying to affect are more than the sum of their parts/individuals and are not necessarily under anyone’s control35, they can be fluid, emergent and unstable. So pursuing the so called opinion leaders should be questioned as a central approach.
33Corman S. R., Trethewey A., Goodall B. A 21st Century Model for Communication in the Global War of Ideas, From Simplistic Influence to Pragmatic Complexity. April 3, 2007. Report #0701. Consortium for Strategic Communication, Arizona State University. P. 11.
34Jolley D., Douglas K. M. The social consequences of conspiracism: Exposure to conspiracy theories decreases intentions to engage in politics and to reduce one's carbon footprint // British Journal of Psychology. doi: 10.1111/bjop. 12018(2013). P. 1.
35Cormann S. et al. Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Strategic Communication to Combat Violent Extremism. New York, 2008. P. 160.
In many ways cloud culture requires a change in mindset. As with Internet start-up companies, failure is much more likely to be the norm even if communication management strategies are at their best persistently. The complexity and ambiguity is such that contingencies abound. A fairly recent example of unintended use of official material can be seen in the brief furry that President Obama’s picture of shooting a rifle created. The White House warning accompanying the picture that would be considered fairly standard under normal circumstances — that it should not be manipulated and misused36, in fact turned into an issue in its own right drawing a flood of criticism and ridicule and thus significantly undermining the goals that the publication of the photographed intended to achieve. This incident is but one illustration that efforts at controlling rather than guiding narratives in the cloud are more counterproductive than anything else.
It seems that sometimes less will be more in terms of messaging and the pace of intervention will have to be adjusted to allow both for the development of some understanding of the effects — often unintended — that previous actions have had and timely engagement. Because the uncomfortable reality is that no one can control the message throughout its halflife in the cloud.
Another implication for communication management is that it could embrace the cloud ethos of mash-ups and experiments, rethink rigid repetition as an operational strategy and tryout variation (while retaining some pivot themes) — in strategies, methods, messages. Being able to abandon messages at the first signs of them not working, I’d argue, is as important as devising them properly initially. However, this is a hard lesson and the common institutional denial we witness today — in respect of repetition of messages, rigid strategies and redundancy — is just one demonstration37.
Nevertheless, the possibilities could balance such contingencies. Crowdsourcing is one. While it can be used for vicious purposes — such as China’s human flesh search engines, it can also enhance collaboration. If properly done — in an honest and humble way, it can provide precious insights into not just the system’s narratives, but also the expectations and even aspirations of the audiences. The US Navy announced it will be launching such an initiative38 and dedicated blogs have deployed crowdsourcing among professionals and an engaged public
36O ’Connor L. White House Warns: Don't Photoshop Obama Gun Pic // Breitbart. URL:
www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/02/02/White-House-Warns-Don-t-Photoshop-Obama-Gun-Pic (Accessed February 5, 2013).
37Gowing N. Skyful of Lies and Black Swans: The New Tyranny of Shifting Information Power in Crises. Oxford, 2009. P. 84.
38 An overview of such initiatives can be found at URL: cimsec.org/crowdsourcing-the-next-navy/ (Accessed January 30, 2013).
to inform debates on the future of Al-Qaida, for example39. However, the often frivolous nature of interactions in the cloud can lead to embarrassing situations like the one faced by the soda company Mountain Dew. In August 2012, the company attempted to crowd source a name for its new apple-flavored drink. The online collective known as 4chan and possibly a similar pool of people on the Reddit platform quickly took over and turned this well-intentioned engagement effort into a massive and rather offensive prank. Users from those entities swelled the number of suggestions and voted to promote offensive ones, for example ‘Diabeetus’ and even ‘Hitler Did Nothing Wrong’ — the latter held the number one spot for a while40. The company was forced to take down the entire campaign website promptly and in a response posted on Twitter said it ‘lost to the Internet’. This accident is good illustration of both the nature of the medium and the complexities of interaction. While it can be argued that the company should have had better vetting procedures for voters and suggestions, the designers of this campaign were most likely seasoned professionals with serious resources behind them and even they failed to anticipate the blowback. Ultimately, regardless of how good-intentioned an excursion into engaging the cloud might be, practitioners should be prepare to react to unknown unknowns that couldn’t have been anticipated and have reasonable back-up strategies. That applies less to soft-drink companies and more to those engaged in campaigns that have more significant social implications, of course, but it applies throughout the field.
The clouds, although hailed as a potential simplification of all things digital, are unlikely to produce straightforward realities and the chaos of the globalized connected world will be reflected in them. Because our virtual digital lives and our ‘real’ lives are increasingly becoming so fused that they cannot be separated. So once we let go of the idea of a well ordered system that could be under a meaningful measure of control, we can start thinking what is possible in situations of uncertainty and devise strategies accordingly.
Like much else in cyberspace non-digital lives can serve as a departure point in discussions. However, I feel that ‘cloud’ is one of the few tech-originating terms that does justice to the changeable, ambiguous and challenging environment we see evolving today. Much like real clouds they can take many forms — open, closed, hybrid. They can also produce storms of varying magnitude — the examples of Sony and Google are illuminating, if only partially. The main difference with natural clouds though is that in many ways the digital ones are what we make of them, as a TV advert for Google’s browser/cloud asserts. The time to take on the conceptual and practical implications of the emergent cloud culture is now. For the first
39For example, counterterrorism expert Clint Watts’ blog polls, Assessing AQ Affiliates Before UBL’s Death: Poll Results #6b. URL: selectedwisdom.com/?p=310 (Accessed January 5, 2013).
404chan Trolls Take Over Mountain Dew ‘Dub the Dew’ Campaign // HyperVocal. URL: hypervocal.com/news/2012/4chan-trolls-take-over-mountain-dews-dub-the-dew-contest/# (Accessed February 1, 2013).
time since the digital revolution began almost 20 years ago scholars and practitioners have the opportunity to take stock of an emerging phenomenon and actively participate not merely in framing and guiding narratives within it, but in its very development.
Thus, I’d argue that the scope for communications management activities in cloud culture is wider than the remit of climate management, but requires significant synergies and presents a challenge for communication management never before experienced by strategists and practitioners in the field.
References:
1. 4chan Trolls Take Over Mountain Dew ‘Dub the Dew’ Campaign // HyperVocal. URL: hypervocal.com/news/2012/4chan-trolls-take-over-mountain-dews-dub-the-dew-contest/# (Accessed February 1, 2013).
2. Allnutt L. Old-School Hacker Oxblood Ruffin Discusses Anonymous and the Future of Hacktivism // Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. URL:
www.rferl.org/content/hacker_oxblood_ruffin_discusses_anonymous_and_the_future_of_hac ktivism/24228166.html (Accessed: December 12, 2012).
3. Anderson N. Prolific “spokesman” for Anonymous leaves the hacker group // Ars Technica. 19 May 2011. URL: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/05/why-anonymous-spokesman-is-leaving-the-group/ (Accessed: January 20, 2013).
4. Bit.ly. “You Just Shared a Link. How Long Will People Pay Attention?” // Bitly Blog.
2011. September 6. URL: blog.bitly.com/post/9887686919/you-just-shared-a-link-how-long-will-people-pay (Accessed November 13, 2012).
5. Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 20122017 // Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO). URL:
www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11 -520862.html (Accessed: January 30, 2013).
6. Cloud Computing Takes Off. Market Set to Boom as Migration Accelerates // Morgan Stanley. 23 May 2011. URL: www.morganstanley.com/views/.../cloud_computing.pdf (Accessed: December 3, 2012).
7. Corman S R., Trethewey A., Goodall B. A 21st Century Model for Communication in the Global War of Ideas, From Simplistic Influence to Pragmatic Complexity. April 3, 2007. Report #0701. Consortium for Strategic Communication, Arizona State University.
8. Cormann S. et al. Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Strategic Communication to Combat Violent Extremism. New York, 2008.
9. Creating the cumulus. Software will be transformed into a combination of services // The Economist. URL: www.economist.com/node/12411908 (Accessed October 27, 2012).
10. Denning D. E. Activism, Hacktivism, and Cyberterrorism: The Internet as a Tool for
Influencing Foreign Policy // Internet and International Systems: Information Technology and American Foreign Policy Decisionmaking Workshop. URL:
oldsite.nautilus.org/archives/info-policy/workshop/papers/denning.html (Accessed: January 7, 2013).
11. Fouts J. Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds // The Imagination Age. URL: www.theimaginationage.net/2009/01/understanding-islam-through-virtual.html (Accessed: October 30, 2012).
12. GoodmanM., KhannaP. The Power of Moore’s Law in a World of Geotechnology 2 Jan
2013 // The National Interest. URL: nationalinterest.org/article/the-power-moores-law-world-geotechnology-7888 (Accessed: January 10, 2013).
13. Gowing N. Skyful of Lies and Black Swans: The New Tyranny of Shifting Information Power in Crises. Oxford, 2009.
14. Jolley D., Douglas K. M. The social consequences of conspiracism: Exposure to conspiracy theories decreases intentions to engage in politics and to reduce one's carbon footprint. // British Journal of Psychology. doi: 10.1111/bjop. 12018(2013).
15. Kelley M., Ingersol G. Cloud Computing Has Officially Brought the Global Cyberwar to the US Doorstep. // Business Insider. URL: www.businessinsider.com/cloud-computing-brings-cyber-warfare-to-us-2013-1 (Accessed February 1, 2013).
16. Leadbeater C. Cloud Culture: the future of global cultural relations // British Council URL: www.britishcouncil.org/russia-projects-cultural-creative-economy-useful-resources-cloudculturecharlesleadbeater (Accessed: October 30, 2012).
17. Lee D. Governments will start 'lashing back' as internet grows // BBC News. 20 June
2012. URL: www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18527852 (Accessed: January 10, 2013).
18. Lim M. From War-Net to Net-War: The Internet and Resistance Identities in Indonesia // International Information and Library Review. Vol. 35, Issue 2-4. June 2003. P. 233 - 248.
19. Lynch M. Twitter Devolutions // Foreign Policy. URL: www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/07/twitter_devolutions_arab_spring_social_media?p age=full (Accessed February 7, 2013).
20. Miller R. What’s In a Name? Utility vs. Cloud vs. Grid // Data Center Knowledge (DCK). 25 March 2008. URL: www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/03/25/whats-in-a-name-utility-vs-cloud-vs-grid/ (Accessed: November 1, 2013).
21. Musawi M. A. Cheering for Osama: How Jihadists Use Internet Discussion Forums // Quilliam Foundation. URL: www.quilliamfoundation.org/press-releases/new-quilliam-report-cheering-for-osama-how-jihadists-use-internet-discussion-forums/ (Accessed: February 27, 2013).
22. Nelson M. R. Building an Open Cloud // Science. №324. 2009. P. 1656-1657.
23. Nye J. S. The Future of Power. New York, 2011.
24. O’Connor L. White House Warns: Don't Photoshop Obama Gun Pic // Breitbart. URL: www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/02/02/White-House-Warns-Don-t-Photoshop-Obama-Gun-Pic (Accessed February 5, 2013).
25. Polleschi I. Busted: Half Of These Companies' Twitter Followers Are Bots // Business Insider. URL: www.businessinsider.com/busted-half-of-these-companies-twitter-followers-are-bots-2012-6 (Accessed October 30, 2012).
26. Scavo F. Cutting through the fog of cloud computing definitions // The Enterprise
System Spectator. URL: fscavo.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/cutting-through-fog-of-cloud-
computing.html (Accessed December 1, 2012).
27. Staff Ars. Week in tech: SOPA defeated, Megaupload taken down // Ars Technica. 21
January 2012. URL: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/week-in-tech-sopa-defeated-
megaupload-taken-down/ (Accessed: February 3, 2013).
28. Talbot D. Given Tablets, but No Teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves // MIT Technology Review. 29 October 2012.
URL: www.technologyreview.com/news/506466/given-tablets-but-no-teachers-ethiopian-children-teach-themselves/ (Accessed: November 15, 2012).
29. Velasquez A. Social media and online political discussion: The effect of cues and informational cascades on participation in online political communities // New Media & Society. December 2012. Vol. 14. No. 8.
30. Wallin M. The Challenges of the Internet and Social Media in Public Diplomacy // American Security Project report. February 2013. URL: americansecurityproject.org/featured-items/2013/the-challenges-of-the-internet-and-social-media-in-public-diplomacy/ (Accessed: February 5, 2013).
31. Water T. J. Hyperformance: Using Competitive Intelligence for Better Strategy and Execution. San Francisco, 2010.
