Accessible,Transparent,Progressive: Conceptualising the Militarisation of Digital Space Through the Social Media Presence of Arms Manufacturers

The Militarisation of Digital Space

Central here is the process of militarisation, which is ‘the social and international relations of the preparation for, and conduct of, organised political violence’. ²¹ In its broadest terms, militarisation can be thought of as the discourses and practices that celebrate, normalise and legitimise violence. ²² Unsurprisingly, a common site of militarisation is the space around militaries themselves, with personnel publicly valorised (Strand ²³ discusses the reification of veterans in Sweden, whilst Browning and Haigh ²⁴ outline the case of elderly veteran fundraiser Captain Tom Moore). The discourse and practices of war remembrance of these military personnel evoke a sense of strength, moral fortitude and sacrifice, whilst simultaneously obscuring the horrific violence of combat. ²⁵ Taking this further, active societal engagement with the military is also conceptualised as a force for social good (e.g. Basham ²⁶ makes this case with regards to military youth engagement, especially working-class boys, who are seen to benefit from authority and rulesets).

Whilst an exploration of militarisation does demand an interrogation of the military, the process exceeds it, incorporating a range of subjects and objects. ²⁷ This, therefore, encompasses not only situations of formally declared warfare but pushes us towards an expansive understanding of how, where and why this process occurs, functioning differently across domains. ²⁸ It may take place within international legal spaces, such as the Arms Trade Treaty for example, which Stavrianakis ²⁹ argues ‘legitimises liberal forms of militarism’. Alternatively, militarisation can occur within the everyday – for example, through colours or clothing styles – which signals a social normalisation of the military. ³⁰ Its multifaceted nature means that the process of militarisation must be understood as differential, impacting groups differently along many lines. These include sex and gender, race, class and dis/ability. ³¹ Militarisation then, is not a static event, but a process that also responds to new social and technological advances. ³² This means that we must constantly ask how and where militarisation takes place.

Receiving significant attention has been the relationship between the military and the entertainment industry. This has been referred to as militainment ³³ and is nicely captured by the full title of Der Derian’s ³⁴ book: Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network. There is a long history of military use of entertainment spaces as branding exercises and this relationship is cemented across a variety of platforms from cinema to videogames, to television. For example, television programmes featuring military-style training exercises, such as SAS: Who Dares Wins, depict the military as elite and brave. ³⁵ The value of this relationship is highlighted by the fact that military personnel often work in the entertainment industry, whilst military institutions such as the army provide equipment for use in films and television. ³⁶ The relationship between security actors and the entertainment industry has changed over time and the contemporary era offers new opportunities to cement these bonds further, through new digital technology. ³⁷ The positive representations of war and military actors function as a type of branding exercise, lending legitimacy to these individuals and institutions and positioning violence as pleasurable.

One comparatively new site of attention is the internet. Whilst this now has strong links to the entertainment industry, it has a longer relationship with militaries and security actors, being first designed for military use through projects such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). ³⁸ Plans for the framework of the internet as we know it now were set out in the 1970s and operationalised in the 1980s, broadening beyond military borders and into the public domain. The internet has changed significantly since it first became part of public life, operating in a range of ways that make humans more connected than ever before. Referring to social media spaces, Williams et al. ³⁹ assert that ‘it is now largely accepted that these interactions constitute a socio-technical assemblage that creates a new public sphere where key aspects of civil society are played out’. Thus, the digital realm is a key space for the enactment of social interaction, global politics and more. ⁴⁰

Central to this article is the militarisation of this digital space, which makes it possible to access new, younger audiences. One especially interesting reflection on the tensions of militarism in digital space is Stengel and Shim, ⁴¹ who argue in the German context that the concept of ‘anti-militarism’ has itself been militarised. To make this case, they examine a social media series titled Die Rektruten showing that the presentation of German society as civil and ordered is a key ingredient in facilitating military violence. As above, however, militaries are not the only ones participating in the militarisation of digital space. Arms manufacturers occupy social media also, making use of inclusive language such as ‘we’ to make viewers feel like part of their team. Noting that the companies rarely refer to death in these spaces, Jackson ⁴² argues that this is a representation of ‘clean war’ where evidence of the violence such as tactical language remains, but the violence itself is hidden from visibility. The effect here is that readers can allow themselves to make a connection with these companies whilst retaining a distance from violence. Other actors include PMSCs such as CACI and DynCorp. With respect to these companies, Joachim et al. ⁴³ find that social media spaces are used as a site of branding. The companies in question aim for diverging brand positioning, as either modern or ‘home-grown’, in an effort to secure further custom. There are, then, a variety of military and military-adjacent actors located within the social media space.

Further, it is important to look beyond the content itself and examine the ways in which social media formats impact our engagement with militarisation. I ⁴⁴ argue elsewhere that the practice of storing videos of army recruitment materials on YouTube engenders the militarisation of digital space. This allows YouTube – and other social media spaces – to act as a repository for militarised content, making it much easier to access this than it would have done before the internet became widespread. Homemade videos created by soldiers serving in the ‘War on Terror’ have also appeared on YouTube blurring the lines between official and unofficial output and bringing the war home in a way that civilians would not have previously had access to.^45,46 These videos can then proliferate across other social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and – more recently – TikTok. With respect to the people who view militarised content online, Austin ⁴⁷ has an interesting discussion of viewer reactions. This work makes use of the offline method of accidental ethnography, providing an insight into the consumption of this material. ⁴⁸ What impact does it have for this content to occupy a social media space? As Jackson et al. ⁴⁹ explain, the effect of social media use in this context is ‘to promote the view that the presence of the military in everyday life is natural’. In this article, I make use of a different method – netnography – to ask how arms manufacturers’ social media presence might facilitate militarisation ontologically and epistemologically.

Tensions of Exposure and Revelation

The above section explored the process of militarisation, especially with respect to the arms trade and digital space. Taking the concept of secrecy as a starting point, in this section, I examine the processes through which tensions between the exposure and revelation of violence facilitate militarisation in this social media space. With respect to arms manufacturing specifically, much of the terrain in which arms sales are made is shrouded in secrecy because this is often labelled a ‘national security’ issue. This lack of clear information makes it harder to trace harms and hold relevant parties responsible. ⁵⁰ In order to keep the secret secret, ‘economies of secrecy’ – the direction of economic capital towards the maintenance of secrecy – can emerge as a means of control. ⁵¹

It has been argued that, ‘To date, the interplay between secrecy and security has been explored within security studies most often through a framing of secrecy and security as a “balancing” act, where secrecy and revelation are binary opposites’. ⁵² Within some approaches to secrecy, it is assumed that the only missing ingredient is knowledge of the information underpinning the secret: that once people become aware of the nature of a secret, it will automatically be known, recognised and transparent. ⁵³ However, in practice this binary is rarely as clearly distinct as we might assume, with manifold messy ontological and empirical problems. There are many layers to secrecy, exposure and revelation, and I aim to build upon recent tendencies to question the ‘standard and sometimes clichéd binaries’ ⁵⁴ that have constrained earlier works within this space.

The relationship between ‘secret’ and ‘not secret’ is not a straightforward one, and the distinction between exposure and revelation is helpful in understanding how this state-sanctioned sale of arms is made possible. As Stampnitzky ⁵⁵ argues, there is a difference between exposure as the release of information, and revelation which is a public recognition of this information and what it means. The conceptual difference between exposure and revelation is that, for the latter perhaps ‘the explosion never comes, and remains instead as tensed possibility’. ⁵⁶ For the revealed – as opposed simply to the exposed – the problem is not one of information but of widely agreed acknowledgement and the risk this poses to the ordering and ontological security of the everyday. One such example is the leaks by Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden of US government documents. These did not deliver into the public domain information wholly unknown, but rather ‘[confirmed] politically embarrassing public secrets’ ⁵⁷ that called into question the US self-image as a force for progress on the global stage. The conceptualisation of exposure and revelation is thus underpinned by an ontology that blurs the line between knowing and not knowing, seeing and unseeing, speaking to the complex layers and practices of secrecy. ⁵⁸

As a result of the potentiality, waiting and constant negotiation of the tension of knowing/not knowing, it is perhaps more useful to conceive of secrecy as an ongoing process. ⁵⁹ Building upon this, Stampnitzky ⁶⁰ highlights the ways in which the tension between exposure and revelation function in the same way. Revelation is, therefore, not simply a switch that can be flicked on, but a process to be interpreted as it is constantly re/negotiated, maintained and challenged across a range of layers, including geospatial, technical, cultural and spectacular. ⁶¹ Of the work in this space, much explores the positives of transparency, the principle underlying revelation: ‘Transparency and openness, meanwhile, are valorized, with this valuation sometimes traced through a long line of enlightenment philosophical thinking, from Kant, Rousseau and Bentham’. ⁶² As a result, there is typically a focus on direct accountability (of the kind effected by the aforementioned Manning and Snowden leaks) that results from revelations where the principle of transparency has not been upheld. In contrast, an emphasis upon the process – rather than the specific nature of a given exposure/revelation – takes a different approach, aiming to trace the relevant discourses and practices of power that operate within this space. ⁶³

To provide an example, Stampnitzky ⁶⁴ theorises the relationship between exposure and revelation in the domain of torture within a ‘War on Terror’ context. She argues that this is a messy process, whereby acts that might constitute torture were made public whilst there were reassurances that these acts did not, in fact, constitute torture. This was a recurring pattern of information release (official or otherwise) and minimisation that took place frequently. Here, it is made clear that it is not simply what is exposed that matters, but rather also: what this exposure means for society, how it is acknowledged (if at all), what practices this makes possible and how power might be re/produced through this process. Indeed, the process that holds exposure and revelation in tension has not yet received as much attention as it deserves ⁶⁵ and that is the focus of this article.

The relationship between the discursive and material is co-constitutive. ⁶⁶ Instances in which lives are lost due to arms could be a driver for revelation and not just exposure. In the case of the arms trade, however, the relationship between exposure and revelation is muddied. The exposed but not revealed makes possible the maintenance of the status quo: if harms are exposed but socially unacknowledged, there is little reason for powerful actors to effect change. Thus, whilst there is still some public awareness of the harms enacted by these weapons, there is no shared recognition of this information as revelation, and no attendant consequences. In this sense, knowledge of the harms inflicted by weapons is much like an inert gas, present but unreactive.

Accessibility and Transparency

I have demonstrated in the introduction that these companies sell arms that are employed to cause serious harm, a practice that is typically considered secret, at least to some degree. Stampnitzky ⁸⁶ argues that states and other actors employ the practice of secrecy when violating international norms to neutralise their actions. Contrastingly, transparency has been conceptualised as a virtue, ‘a goal to be politically pursued – a task: something which still needs to be enforced on recalcitrant reality, having first been carefully designed with the help of specialist expertise’. ⁸⁷ Here, I argue that arms manufacturers place themselves ‘in plain sight’. ⁸⁸ In the 21st century it is commonplace for large brands to have social media accounts. These arms manufacturers – through virtue of having their own accounts – can then position themselves alongside companies such as McDonalds or Nike as ‘simply another brand’, even though the nature of their products makes them qualitatively different. ⁸⁹ The perception that social media can ‘enhance transparency’ is common among PR professionals, ⁹⁰ which perhaps explains how arms manufacturers have come to have social media accounts.

These accounts have a great many followers: Lockheed Martin has 439,000 followers, Raytheon 184,000 and Northrop Grumman 218,500. All of these companies joined Twitter between 2008 and 2009, and are present on Facebook as well, though the latter is beyond the scope of this article. Their high follower counts demonstrate they have a level of public engagement – at minimum, enough for hundreds of thousands of people to follow them – and the tweets of these arms manufacturers will appear in their followers’ feeds when issued. That their accounts are visible to so many people positions the companies as ‘having nothing to hide’. One does not need to interact (e.g. like, re-tweet, reply) with posts to consume them, however. Their accounts are also visible to non-followers who may see this material as re-tweets or likes from other people, unless they otherwise have them blocked. If curious, non-followers might see their Twitter output whilst browsing their feed, being able to scroll back through the past several months’ worth of material. This material can be accessed on laptops, desktops or mobile telephones, at any time of day, whilst taking the bus to work or browsing over lunch, for example. Openness and accessibility have long been represented as a positive and positioning arms manufacturers as transparent makes it harder to question their practices. This is especially the case because states reassure the public that there are strict controls on what arms manufacturers are allowed to produce and sell, through the deployment of restrictive arms export licences. ⁹¹ As Larsson ⁹² finds, transparency is perceived as a positive by key actors in the (Swedish) arms trade; again, the cultivation of a high follower count makes possible the perception that arms manufacturers are just like any other company whose products we might consume in an ordinary day.

The image of transparency and openness is enhanced by the frequency and volume of tweets. On average, these companies tweeted 3.12 times per day over the course of the period examined. This is more than many other accounts tweet per day (e.g. @McDonalds – the fast-food company – sometimes goes days or even weeks without tweeting), presenting these arms-selling companies as transparent and accessible. This article is not so much concerned with intent than what these representations make possible: on a more direct level, higher frequency tweeting from popular accounts may influence the content of searches. If there are, for example, a large number of tweets by Lockheed Martin then these will take up greater space in searches, making it harder to find tweets that tag (or ‘@’) these companies in order to criticise them. Schneiker et al. ⁹³ find that private military and security companies ‘flood’ their feeds with large amounts of irrelevant information, with some accounts tweeting over seven times per day. Instead, the number of daily tweets by the arms manufacturers in question is significantly lower, balancing output with a sense of transparency.

The accessible nature of these practices provides us with a link to literatures on everyday militarism. Other brands may have social media accounts and, for them, one of the primary purposes of occupying this space may be to drive sales of their products. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon are not reliant upon social media to drive sales; bluntly, it is unlikely that any of their followers will decide that they have need for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or a missile. Instead, it is their occupation of this site that functions to re/militarise this digital space, re/locating it as a site of the martial. ⁹⁴ The nature of social media provides an ideal petri dish for militarisation for a variety of reasons; aside from the large userbase, the everyday, ordinary nature of social media makes possible a form of passive militarism, where we like, share and follow accounts that sell products for the purposes of war and conflict. This argument has also been made by Crilley and Pears ⁹⁵ within their analysis of the CIA Twitter account. They assert that the CIA occupation of this space is an important tool within the intelligence community, because it offers the opportunity to ‘narrate themselves and their actions in positive ways, representing themselves and their actions as legitimate’ because they are presenting them in the public eye. As Basham ⁹⁶ has pointed out, everyday militarism is not a new phenomenon, but the space in which it occurs in this case makes it notable. This troubles the exposure/revelation binary because it reinforces exposure of negative events – by reminding us that arms manufacturers exist – whilst failing to offer a shared acknowledgement of said events.

These companies project an image of accessibility and transparency through the provision of ‘managed information under the guise of transparency’. ⁹⁷ Here, this occurs through the use of social media management. All of the arms manufacturers discussed in this article use a company named Sprinklr to manage their social media presence, including to produce and/or post tweets on their behalf. Sprinklr is a paid-for service that companies can contract to support them in projecting positive public-facing representations. This is made clear by information contained within their tweets, which state the time and the platform used to create the post, for example: ‘10:00 PM. . .Jan 23, 2019. . .Sprinklr Publishing’. Companies such as Sprinklr are likely to handle any social media controversies or campaigns directed towards their clients. In this case, I argue that these ‘subjects [social media management firms] protect the secret while also signalling its existence . . . as well as gaining financially or otherwise as a result’. ⁹⁸ In addition, Durand and Vergne ⁹⁹ note that companies in ‘stigmatised’ industries seek to avoid negative coverage in the first place; reputation management firms such as Sprinklr, therefore, aid in maintaining the delicate balance between exposure and revelation. Companies like Sprinklr are used in the social media management of private military and security companies, too. ¹⁰⁰

Sprinklr ¹⁰¹ promise that they can ‘protect your brand’s reputation’ and ‘Mitigate the risk of PR crises by restricting content for confidentiality, red-flag keyword monitoring, and the ability to automatically stop publishing across all channels, when required’. It is beyond the scope of this article to provide a full, detailed analysis of Sprinklr’s website, though it is interesting to note its own representations of accessibility and transparency. Their website contains, for example, statements positioning the brand as friendly: ‘Our Vision: To be the world’s most loved enterprise software company, ever’. Further, the website itself is well-populated across many pages including Products, Services and About Us, with a story about the origins of the company, mimicking the same representations as the arms manufacturers’ Twitter feeds.

The companies in question undertake paid Twitter advertising, extending the properties of accessibility and transparency described above: not only are these companies open and here for you to discover, they are coming to you to show you about their aims and activities. Having been targeted by this advertising myself during the course of this research, I am aware that it is being utilised by these companies (though am not able to obtain information as to the full extent of this). Whilst work has been done on the relationship between security actors and advertising within a digital context, ¹⁰² it has been harder to understand how this advertising is designed to operate. Twitter is secretive about the ways in which its platforms work, ¹⁰³ and it has been reluctant to allow for research purposes access to its algorithms. Further work around the maintenance and management of the tension of exposure/revelation in digital spaces would therefore be useful.

Whilst the arms manufacturers in question have positioned themselves as accessible and transparent, there are contradictions within this representation. They do not discuss every aspect of their business within their social media feeds: what is not located within arms manufacturers’ social media discourse? What is missing and why does this matter? Or as Rappert and Bauchspies ¹⁰⁴ ask ‘Why attend to absence at all?’ With respect to the arms trade, it is this tension between what is said and unsaid in this space that makes it possible to ‘look away’ from violence. Perhaps most obviously, what was not present in the tweets examined was a discussion of violence, suffering or death. ¹⁰⁵ I have argued above that these companies present themselves as open and transparent and, as a result, they can be read as omitting or hiding nothing. It is this veneer of openness that makes it possible to ignore the violence that their Twitter accounts invisibilise (e.g. suffering, death). In an interesting contrast, Shim and Stengel ¹⁰⁶ find that militaries do on occasion share images of death on their social media, arguing that this positions military life as grievable. In the case of arms manufacturers, however, those who lose their lives are arguably not seen as grievable ¹⁰⁷ and are not depicted. ¹⁰⁸ It is not hugely surprising that these companies do not highlight the suffering visited by their products. In-depth discussions of violence are prohibited by Twitter’s terms of use, though, given their continued presence on the platform, these do not preclude companies from existing within this digital space even when their products might cause demonstrable human suffering. What, then, does the presence of legal arms manufacturers ‘do’ in this space? I argue that this relationship between the absent and the present renders arms trade violence exposed but not revealed, neutralising critique within this social media space.

Rappert and Bauchspies ¹⁰⁹ highlight the relationship between absence and presence, arguing that absence ‘can provide a remedy to misperception about the solidity of what is deemed present’. The role of the absent is best understood with reference to the present, and below I sketch some of what is contained within this discourse. This can be conceptualised as ‘selective disclosure’ ¹¹⁰ or ‘managed openness’, ¹¹¹ whereby actors or organisations consider carefully what they want to share and share only a limited range of information, whilst invisibilising other details. These companies – unsurprisingly – present themselves positively within their social media space, distracting from the aforementioned harms caused by their products.

Distraction and Progress

Arms manufacturers invisibilise violence and omit discussion of this within their social media feeds. Instead, they construct themselves positively, which distracts from any suffering caused by their products. This distraction operates in three ways to present these companies as drivers of progress, benefitting the world in a range of different areas: socially, environmentally and technologically. The first area I examine is social progress, beginning with the companies’ relationship with women. ¹¹² There are a variety of ways in which women are represented within these feeds and often the women emphasised are staff. This is the case for Lockheed Martin’s re-tweet of Bloomberg Quicktake ¹¹³ which showcases female staff members: ‘[flying saucer emoji] Meet the women of @Lockheed Martin who are in charge of these space projects:- GPS III- InSight Mars Lander- OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission . . .’. Here, the women in question are named specifically as women; in contrast, all-male groups of employees are – within the tweets examined – never referred to as ‘the men of Lockheed Martin’. In addition to being named as women specifically, women are also portrayed pictorially within these tweets, mirroring other research finding that images are a key component of brands’ social media posts. ¹¹⁴ The depiction of women in this case highlights their identity as women as part of the construction of a progressive workspace. ¹¹⁵

The companies are represented as progressive within broader society, through tweets exploring the relationship of these companies with women outside their employee pool. For example, Raytheon ¹¹⁶ employees ‘give back’ by offering support to ‘men and women who have served in the armed forces’. Here, the women in question are being presented on equal terms with men, as part of military institutions. Elsewhere, I ¹¹⁷ argue that militaries are increasingly using women as part of their recruitment campaigns and the discussion of women in this context is similarly a military one in which women are not typically constructed as ‘normal’. The representations within these feeds take this further than simply normalising women, however. Not only are women present in these Twitter feeds, they are represented as an important element of these companies’ corporate mission to advance social progress. ¹¹⁸ For example, Lockheed Martin ¹¹⁹ tweets ‘We support the #WGDP [Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative] and efforts to promote #STEM education and workforce training that empowers women around the world to reach their full potential’. This extends beyond women, however, with an emphasis placed upon engagement with girls, too (again, named as girls or pictured in images) through ‘women in science’ days, ¹²⁰ mentoring sessions/career tips ¹²¹ or schools events. ¹²² Women and girls, then, are seen as a resource that arms manufacturers can ‘unlock’ and deploy for the betterment of society. ¹²³

Representations of the people of colour on their staff further enhance the portrayal of arms manufacturers as progressive. Most senior here is Raytheon CEO John Harris, a Black man. He is portrayed or named in several tweets.^124,125,126 A range of other employees of colour are discussed or pictured by manufacturers, from Shawn Purvis, ‘named one of the Most Powerful Women in Corporate America’ by Black Enterprise, ¹²⁷ to those of Asian heritage facilitating an event for the Korea Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology, ¹²⁸ to Black staff talking with those of Asian heritage on video. ¹²⁹ This once again draws out similarities with discussions around military personnel, where people of colour are an important feature of recruitment campaigns in the United States and United Kingdom, widening the recruitment pool available to the institution. ¹³⁰

People of colour – non-employees – are positioned as holding relationships with the companies, reinforcing the representation of progressiveness. The companies represent themselves as working with people of colour outside of their organisation, from Black mayors ¹³¹ to radio hosts, ¹³² to the 1944 Tuskegee airmen who flew their planes. ¹³³ Northrop Grumman ¹³⁴ tweets also about their activities on ‘#MLKDayofService’, in reference to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. King, described by Bruyneel ¹³⁵ as ‘haloed’ in the public memory, is regularly invoked within discourses of social progress and civility. His use by Northrop Grumman in this case positions the company as possessing the same values as he did. The use of the hashtag here also connects Northrop Grumman to wider discussions on the subject of service and volunteering. ¹³⁶ More systematically, all companies emphasise their ongoing relationship with the organisation Black Engineer and Black Enterprise. This is especially the case around the Black Engineering Awards and Black Enterprise achievement lists,^137,138,139 which invoke ideas of ‘Black excellence’ in a space where this has not always been welcome, ¹⁴⁰ and presenting these companies as driving forward Black success.

Building on ideas of social progress, companies are additionally constructed as environmentally progressive. Positioning yourself as an environmental expert and ally is all the more important in an age where people are increasingly concerned about climate change. ¹⁴¹ This is congruent with aforementioned discourses of greenwashing, whereby companies use superficial representations of environmentally friendly action in order to position themselves as positive for society. The first way in which this occurs here is through text, with all three arms manufacturers discussing their positive impact on the natural world. Raytheon, ¹⁴² for example, discusses its ‘Common Ground System’ which is designed for weather observation. In this case, the name ‘common ground’ indicates that this is an issue for everyone, that bridges divides. Northrop Grumman ¹⁴³ takes a slightly different approach, making an intertextual reference to the world of fiction: ‘Although weather manipulation on a personal level exists only in fiction, weather machine technology on a bigger scale is already on the horizon . . .’. Emojis are, arguably, a modern form of ‘text’. These are also employed within tweets about the environment, making use of a communication format that is particular to contemporary times and makes content more eye-catching. ¹⁴⁴ They also make the content appear more child-like or ‘cute’ in its method of delivery, which ‘can project a favourable social image to consumers’. ¹⁴⁵

Images showcasing the beauty of the natural world are also impactful within these social media feeds. These reinforce the textual relationship between the companies and the environment by repeating the representations in another format. Indeed, the natural world provides a particularly good opportunity for the deployment of visual material. Northrop Grumman, ¹⁴⁶ for example portray a high-contrast stormy sky, whilst Raytheon ¹⁴⁷ takes a slightly different approach that makes clearer the relationship between the environment and technology by depicting clouds on a radar-like screen. ¹⁴⁸ Images demand attention because there is a specificity to them, especially through the generation of emotional response.^149,150 In this case, the present obscures the absent – suffering and death – through the use of attractive or interesting environmental imagery.

The relationship between text and image is especially interesting with respect to an internet-specific element: alternative text (‘alt text’). The use of alt text is common across the companies examined. Alt text is read by screen-readers used by visually impaired people, in order for them to understand what is contained within an image. It must be inputted manually, generating extra-workload. The use of alt text here, then, positions the companies as allies of visually impaired people. Chiarella et al. ¹⁵¹ argue that tweets relating to ‘natural sciences’ make use of extensive visual imagery and, as a result, more people and organisations should use alt text. One example in our case refers in the text to Raytheon’s ‘global system of ground antennas’. ¹⁵² It is illustrated with a photograph of three large spheres resembling golf balls, in a pastel-coloured sunrise haze. Interestingly, the alt text provides a purely factual description of the image, rather than attempting to explain it as visually attractive: ‘Receiving stations for the Joint Polar Satellite System’s Common Ground System’. Without this alt text, many people would likely not know what the image showed, they would simply assess its beauty.

These companies are also represented as scientifically advanced drivers of technological progress beyond environmental monitoring. As one of the images shared by Raytheon ¹⁵³ states, they deliver ‘innovation without limitation’. There is a strong focus upon space exploration, for example Lockheed Martin ¹⁵⁴ positions itself as an authority on space, explaining that they are ‘thrilled’ to be one of the five companies working with NASA to develop a prototype of a lunar habitat. Northrop Grumman ¹⁵⁵ also positions itself as an authority on space by making use of an intertextual reference to the entertainment industry ¹⁵⁶ : ‘Hollywood loves adventure, & most of all it loves a spectacle. So it’s no surprise that space travel movies are a big draw. But as space travel is evolving in real life, are Hollywood movies getting it right or is realism a moving target? . . .’. Here, Northrop Grumman positions itself as a company who can ‘correct’ common errors in public understanding as a result of their technological expertise. This tweet is accompanied by an image of Earth, taken from space with a sunburst emerging over the top, drawing the viewer’s attention. The wider context of space as a site of security ¹⁵⁷ – with attendant potential for further militarisation – makes the distracting use of imagery all the more important in this case.

These tweets feature numerous, technical examinations of aircraft sold by these companies, presenting them as the cutting edge of technological progress. The technologies are, on occasion, also weapons, for example, drones or UAVs but as Larsson ¹⁵⁸ notes, the deployment of dual-use technology engenders plausible deniability about their use. Text – a minimal amount – is a common way of conveying the sense of technological expertise, for example, ‘The F-21 is different, inside and out, delivering unmatched Make in India opportunities and strengthening@IAF_MCC. Meet the #F21’. ¹⁵⁹ Alternatively, text like this is contained within a linked URL, as is the case for a Raytheon tweet. ¹⁶⁰ This links to an article on a website ¹⁶¹ which discusses ‘Skyler low-power radar, the RF-based MESMER (from Raytheon Technologies and Department 13) and the multi-detecting Black Sage UASX’. As in the Lockheed Martin example, technological expertise is emphasised through acronyms and terminology specific to the industry. The process of militarisation often results in the consumption of content that the public finds enjoyable in some way. ¹⁶² Examining those who work with nuclear weapons, Cohn ¹⁶³ argues that language – especially acronyms and highly specific terminology – functions to construct a ‘club’ of those who understand it, drawn against those who do not. In this case, the use of technical specifications functions in much the same way. This type of content is effective because people enjoy consuming it, being interpolated into the position of intelligent, technologically informed citizens. The utilisation of technical terminology further functions to blur the boundaries with respect to any equipment that could reasonably be considered a dual-use technology. ¹⁶⁴ These might simply be interesting air or spacecraft with a range of technical specifications. There is thus a plausible reason for their creation beyond violence.

Overall, what is contained in these feeds is very positive, suggesting that these companies build rather than destroy, help rather than hurt and improve rather than hold back. As Schneiker et al. ¹⁶⁵ argue in another context of digital militarisation (in their case, private military and security companies’ Twitter feeds), the use of Twitter by arms companies ‘helps to distract from what these companies are actually doing’. Let us return, then, to the subject of absence. What is not in these feeds are materials that make us think of war. The representation of weapons and the aircraft used to deliver them is sanitised to contain only attractive or technical elements. The present, therefore, functions as a pretty distraction in this case. It is known that these weapons do something, otherwise what is the point of having them: either they kill or threaten to kill. This is not only absent in these feeds, but what is present here is an active distraction from these practices. Thus, we can ask: which actors bear responsibility for this suffering? These feeds do not pose this question and yet they do offer a clear answer: not us. They occasionally showcase the weapons they sell but present themselves as unrelated to the violence these cause. It is a representation, then, of anti-martial politics whereby these companies are involved in almost everything else but war. Where they may make planes and weapons (that others may or may not deploy) and drive forward social progress, space exploration or environmental protection, but most definitely not war, violence or harm.