Adversarial Propaganda: How Enemies Target the U.S. to Fuel Division

Abstract

This article explores how foreign enemies of the United States target American citizens with propaganda intended to fuel societal division. It reviews propaganda conceptually, discusses individual, group, and cultural factors that make the United States is uniquely vulnerable to false propaganda, and details the processes and mechanisms by which adversarial propaganda attempts to create false narratives and perpetuate half-truths in the digital domain. It concludes with a discussion on how to mitigate adversarial propaganda’s effects.

Keywords:

• Propaganda
• United States
• societal division
• digital
• false narratives

Acknowledgments

The views expressed in this article are the views of the authors alone. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Naval Academy, the Naval Postgraduate School, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, the Department of Defense, or any other entity within the U.S. Government; and the authors are not authorized to provide any official position of these entities.