Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Hilary Reininger

I propose a new approach and strategy to defending against Information Warfare tactics by focusing on making the targets of such attacks resilient to false information. I focus on social media users and their interactions with false information. I lay out much-needed definitions, a framework for persuasion, and proposed measures useful for combating the effects of information warfare through social media. I conclude with describing a desirable, measurable end state for each social media user, that of having advanced information discernment, or ability to consciously judge the veracity of information and also employ practices to limit unconscious exposure to false information.

Background

Disinformation campaigns are difficult to defend against, particularly for Western, liberal democracies. As an example, Russia is advantaged over Western democracies by its authoritarian structure and ease of broadcasting a unified narrative. Russia’s authoritarianism gives it more control over both the message and the means of dissemination. Democracies, on the other hand, have many voices that are often conflicting and slow to coalesce. Additionally, Russia’s control of state-run media, and heavy influence over other media sources, allows it to saturate media channels with a unified narrative. Conversely, most democracies are prevented from controlling the same depth and breadth of media resources.

In observing how military clients are approaching defending Americans from information warfare, I searched for other strategies and stakeholders that could overcome some of the inherent weaknesses of the reactive, slower-paced responses of U.S. military and government approaches. Most of these approaches focus on attribution, enemy tactics, and countering disinformation through prevention and deterrence at the source. These tactics are important, but incomplete.

Presentation

I focus on a complementary, target-centered approach to the military’s enemy-centric approach. Instead of focusing on the source of enemy fire, I will focus on making the target harder to hit, or “hardening the target.” I scoped my target to be social media users and aim to reduce their vulnerability to false information through improving their resilience through increasing their ability to discern false information. I have conducted an initial study and developed definitions, a framework, and proposed measures to understand threats from false information and ways to improve information discernment in a social media user. My dissertation research will test and build these measures later.

This presentation will lend much needed clarity to approaching Information Warfare by laying out definitions and contextualizing related research on the effects of false information on individuals. It will then present a theory of change a targeted social media user may undergo on the path to being influenced by information. It will then propose specific potential measures for how a social media user is influenced. It will conclude with describing the end goal of this approach in “hardening targets” by increasing their information discernment capabilities.

Policy-makers interested in this research would be social media companies and search engines, as well as defense agencies, citizen groups and private citizens.