The Audience is Listening: Jeremy O'Bryan

The Audience is Listening

October 5, 2010
Tags:
cadet cadets life army rotc
We each have our own story.

I'm a civilian public affairs specialist working for U.S. Army Cadet Command. Foremost, we make Army lieutenants. There are 273 Reserve Officers' Training Corps battalions at colleges and universities across the country, and more than 33,000 Army Cadets in those programs. In all, Army ROTC produces about 5,000 new Army leaders every year. About 60 percent of the Army's lieutenants are made in this way.

My job is to tell the story of these Cadets (most of whom will soon be leading America's sons and daughters in combat zones around the world) and the story of our cadre and staff who every day develop these young leaders into people qualified to lead Soldiers.

The young people who join Army ROTC represent the face of our country. They are black, white, and lots of colors in between. They speak dozens of languages from English, to Arabic, to Yiddish. They are Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and Atheist. Some had a quiet rural upbringing on a farm or ranch; some grew up in our busiest cities; some have never been to a beach, while others have never taken a proper hike in the mountains. Many who join ROTC are fresh out of high school and some are combat veterans back in college to become degreed and commissioned.

The stories I'm charged with telling are personal stories of sacrifice, hope, courage, and expectation -- not unusual among the profession of arms. What's unusual is the way in which we're telling many of these stories. We're using the growing popularity of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter to connect our stories from audience to audience. Here's an example: when we publish a story about a Cadet who spent her summer in Morocco learning a new culture and new languages, she can immediately see it online -- then display it to her family, friends, and fans on Facebook. Or broadcast the link to her Twitter followers. Her family, friends, fans, and followers can then share the story to their networks.

Whitney Quesenbery, a user-experience and communication researcher, says that the technologies we use can keep us apart, focused on our own computer screens or mobile devices; but stories, she adds, are ways of rebuilding that connection. What Soldier, given the time to sit with someone from a remote Afghan village who speaks another language, yet actually share stories so that each can know the other even a little, hasn't seen walls of fear and misunderstanding tumble down?

The internet has changed the way we tell stories, just as in the past newspapers, radio, and television have done. And new audiences are available at the click of a button. Telling the personal stories of individuals in our Army has never been easier, and considering the ability of the internet to connect people with the personal stories of others, never carried more importance.

submitted by Jeremy O'Bryan on Oct 5 2010