Steve Tatham

Steve Tatham is a Naval Officer and expert in military public relations and strategic communication. He was a public spokesman for the British Military in Sierra Leone (2000), Afghanistan (2001-2002) and Iraq (2003). He was the Director of Communication Research at the UK Defence Academy's Advanced Research and Assessment Group and is a leading proponent of the doctrine of strategic communication. In 2009 he was seconded to the Joint Intelligence Organisation in the Cabinet Office on "advanced Horizon Scanning Research on the UK National Security Strategy (2) project". According to the Cabinet Office this refers to the Strategic Horizons Unit of the Joint Intelligence Organisation.

Homepage of 'stevetatham.net' the personal webpage of Steve Tatham before all content was removed from the page in late 2010. Screengrab taken 4 March 2010

Strategic Communication

Tatham is the author of "Strategic Communication: A Primer" , the British Military's first articulation of Strategic Communication doctrine. As well as being written to aid the authors of the Ministry of Defence Doctrine and Concepts Centre's formulation of counter-insurgency doctrine (JDP3-40) , Small Wars Journal has stated that

Tatham's primer has been followed by the roll out of a Strategic Communication education program across all UK Staff Courses. Trialed initially on the UK's Tri-Service Warrant Officer's course - where the concept was warmly welcomed - it has subsequently been rolled out to the initial (8 week) staff courses (for Lieutenants and Captains), the Advanced (1 year) staff course (for Majors and Lieutenant Colonels) and the Higher Staff Course for very senior officers.

Affiliations

• Circa 2010 - Associate Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, Kings College, London
• Circa 2010 - Non-Executive Director of Dryad Maritime Intelligence
• Listed as 'current Director of Communication Research' at the UK Defence Academy's Advanced Research and Assessment Group on his own website in February 2010, though the ARAG was subsumed into the Research & Assessment Branch on 1 April 2009 and the RAB was itself disbanded on 1 April 2010. Listed as 'Alumnus, Research & Assessment Branch' in February 2011.
• Circa 2006 - Tatham was listed on his own website as ‘Senior consultant’ at Middle East Consultancy International Ltd in 2006
• 2009 - seconded to the Strategic Horizons Unit of the Joint Intelligence Organisation in the Cabinet Office

Publications

Homepage of 'stevetatham.net' the personal webpage of Steve Tatham after all content was removed from the page in late 2010. Screengrab taken 10 February 2011

Arab media project

Tatham listed the following videos on his website as part of a 6 month project with 3 Arab TV channels in Afghanistan on "defeating the AQ [Al Qaeda] image of "The Crusader"

• A Day in the life of to British soldiers, broadcast on Al-Aribiya, "designed to show the humanity and shared adversity of British and Afghan troops"
• Al-Aribiya feature, tagged on youtube as "ARAG War on Taliban" - ARAG is the acronym of the Advanced Research and Assessment Group
• Al-Aribiya feature, tagged on youtube as "ARAG War on Drugs"

Books and articles

• Steve Tatham Al-Jazeera: Can it Make it Here?, British Journalism Review, March 2005, Vol. 16, No. 1, March 2005, pp.47-52

• Steve Tatham Al Jazeera: Get Used to It, It's Not Going Away, Proceedings, August 2005

• Steve Tatham, Losing Arab Hearts & Minds: The Coalition, Al-Jazeera & Muslim Public Opinion, Hurst & Co, 2006

• Steve Tatham Losing the Information War in Iraq: The Dynamics between Terrorism and, Public Opinion and the Media, Centre of Excellence Defence Against Terrorism, 2007

• Steve Tatham Hearts and Minds: Time to Think Differently?, Naval Review, Vol. 96, No. 4, November 2008, pp. 328-328

• Steve Tatham, Strategic Communication: A Primer, Advanced Research and Assessment Group, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, December 2008

• Steve Tatham and Mohammed El-Katiri Qatar: A Little Local Difficulty?, Research and Assessment Branch, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, August 2009

• Steve Tatham Book Review: Martin Bell, The Truth that Sticks: New Labour's Breach of Trust, Media, War & Conflict, Vol.2, No.2, August 2009, pp.234-236

• Steve Tatham Strategic Communication: An Important New Discipline, The British Army, October 2009, pp.128-129

• Steve Tatham and Andrew Mackay, Behavioural Conflict: From General to Strategic Corporal: Complexity, Adaptation and Influence, The Shrivenham Papers, No. 9, December 2009

• Steve Tatham and Lee Rowland, Strategic Communication & Infuence Operations: Do We Really Get It?, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, July 2010

• Steve Tatham (2009) Tactical Strategic Communication! Placing Informational Effect at the Centre of Command, Small Wars Journal, originally published in British Army Review.