Web taxonomy of the main military units of the planet: content analysis and digital ethnography

Abstract

Different armies around the world have bet to make their websites the center of their digital communicative strategy. This paper examines and compares the websites of 14 elite military units in the five continents to elaborate a taxonomy based on the structured dimensions and indicators of usability, contents, interactivity, and accessibility. For this purpose, a qualitative digital ethnography has been developed using a quantitative-qualitative content analysis made up of 14 thematic dimensions, 36 indicators and 69 variables. This study identifies, among others, the importance of the dialogic and multiformat component in cyberspace. It also concludes that, in general, the armies analyzed have barely included content typologies from gamification, immersion and virtuality, and others.