Gender and Milblogs

In past conflicts, soldiers separated from their homes and families had little opportunity for communication. Letters, ham radios, and telegrams were used by the military to help soldiers stay connected. The length of time for a letter to reach home, the need for someone to be present for a ham radio transmission to be received, or the uncertainty that letters would reach the intended soldier were all problems that, until now, soldiers had to deal with. Now soldiers have an unprecedented communicatory advantage over their forefathers: the weblog.

Soldiers in modern conflicts write hundreds of posts every day. Some write directly to family and friends, others use blogging to provide commentary that we at home would not be able to see in mainstream media. These accounts can be raw and unfiltered, and on the outside they may all look similar.

In her article, "Composing as a Woman," Elizabeth Flynn suggests that men and women have different ways of writing. In other words, that written rhetoric has a gender. This same concept may be applied to military blogs. Through examinations of pieces of writing, Flynn was able to detect differences in topic, tone, and word choice that enabled her to extract the gender. I conducted a similar experiment with two milblogs: one from a man, the other from a woman. Both authors have posts dated when they were serving in Iraq, and both served in the United States Army. Contrary to Flynn, however, my findings were not so clear cut.

"365 and a Wakeup" - Danjel Bout

The first blog, titled "365 and a Wakeup," the most popular blog on milblogging.com, was written by Danjel Bout. Danjel is a husband, a son, and a brother, and wrote that he joined the army to earn money for college. Danjel's post ranged from February 2005 to January 2006, with roughly 15 posts per month. In order to narrow down the research, I've randomly chosen one post from each month to examine. All of Danjel's posts were written when he was in active duty.