Warfare in the Disinformation Age

One of the most important points I tried to convey at the International Media Literacy Conference 2024 was that Western countries like the United States, European Union, and Canada are embroiled in a war that their citizens are often unequipped to recognize or handle. Unlike conventional warfare, which is fought using kinetic tactics and weaponry like guns, tanks, and bombs, this new era of cyber, hybrid, and grey zone warfare is taking place across phones, tablets, and computers. It is penetrating social, political, and economic discussions in unprecedented ways and resulting in a steady stream of discord, discontent, and depression among local populations. This is by design and is a known strategy associated with foreign malign influence. Actors like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are taking advantage of pre-existing societal fault lines and leveraging the use of disinformation to exacerbate enmity and friction within their targets.

Media literacy—however one chooses to define it—is often named as one solution among many for countering disinformation. However, traditional approaches to teaching media literacy often fail to account for modern unconventional warfare tactics. Schools are oftentimes unaware and unprepared to train students how to best protect themselves from coordinated attacks against their mental wellbeing. It is no coincidence that social media, which is known to cause heightened anxiety and depression in the youth population, is a mode of choice for foreign malign actors. Adversaries are cognizant of the impact their social media interactions have on the targeted youth population. One goal of autocracy is to rob the target of any will to resist—to succumb to the notion that there is no hope and that the average person is powerless to significantly impact the political system.

While media literacy programs can and do enhance awareness and immunity to some disinformation campaigns, a more varied approach is necessary to address a broader spectrum of adversarial tactics. It is imperative, first and foremost, that both teachers and students understand that they are under attack. Media literacy lesson plans must incorporate discussions on how militaries utilize storytelling techniques to increase susceptibility to disinformation and engagement with controversial content. Not all inflammatory accounts on the internet are bots or teenaged trolls operating out of state-sponsored warehouses. Some are military operators trained in psychological warfare and their goals are to be manipulative and divisive. The more teachers and students learn about the current state of warfare, the better equipped they will be to protect themselves.

Some key difficulties: Political polarization makes it difficult to address sensitive political/social issues; many teachers lack adequate training in this area; many schools lack the funding for these literacy programs; these types of literacy programs are not universally mandatory.