Disinformation in the Cyber Domain: Detection, Impact, and Counter-Strategies

EasyChair Preprint 1809

Abstract

The authors examined disinformation via social media and its impact on target audiences by conducting interviews with Canadian Armed Forces and Royal Netherlands Army subject matter experts. Given the pervasiveness and effectiveness of disinformation employed by adversaries, particularly during major national events such as elections, the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, and the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, this study assessed several aspects of disinformation including i) how target audiences are vulnerable to disinformation, ii) which activities are affected by disinformation, iii) what are the indicators of disinformation, and iv) how to foster resilience to disinformation in the military and society. Qualitative analyses of results indicated that in order to effectively counter disinformation the focus needs to be on identifying the military’s core strategic narrative and reinforcing the larger narrative in all communications rather than continuously allocating valuable resources to actively refute all disinformation. Tactical messages that are disseminated should be focused on supporting the larger strategic narrative. In order to foster resilience to disinformation for target audiences, inoculation is key; inoculation can be attained through education as part of pre-deployment training for military, as well as public service announcements via traditional formats and through social media for the public, particularly during critical events such as national elections. Manually working with identified indicators of disinformation to monitor ongoing disinformation campaigns is a tedious and resource intensive task in the presence of fast flowing information in multiple social media channels. The authors discuss how such indicators can be leveraged for automated detection of disinformation.

Keyphrases: disinformation, influence, information warfare, social media, strategic narrative, target audience

@booklet{EasyChair:1809,
  author    = {Ritu Gill and Judith van de Kuijt and Magnus Rossell and Ronnie Johansson},
  title     = {Disinformation in the Cyber Domain: Detection, Impact, and Counter-Strategies},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 1809},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2019}}