Understanding narratives and information campaigns

Abstract

Narratives provide the storylines of conflict and in doing so become an arena of conflict themselves. When states mount information campaigns against each other, they are trying to change the narrative. The digital platforms of the new information environment have been identified by various analysts as a significant factor in contemporary strategy and crisis management. But while social media is noisier and more chaotic than traditional media, and unprecedented in its immediacy and accessibility, has it thus far been a game changer in strategic affairs?

In this Adelphi book, Sir Lawrence Freedman and Heather Williams examine the impact of state-led digital information - or disinformation - campaigns in four contexts: the India-Pakistan crisis over Kashmir in 2019; the heightened tensions between the United States and Iran following the assassination of Qasem Soleimani in 2020; China's messaging in response to the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020–22; and the Russia-Ukraine crisis from 2013–23. While noting the meaningful consequences of digital information campaigns, in each case the authors call for a sense of perspective. Such campaigns are only one aspect of wider political struggles. They are also difficult for their initiators to control, and less likely to influence foreign audiences than domestic ones. Overall, the authors argue, there is little evidence so far to suggest such campaigns will have as much influence over contemporary crises as the classical instruments of military and economic power.

Notes

1 Peter W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018).

2 For more on such categorisations, including an argument that ‘cognitive’ effects are often the most significant consequences of cyber operations, see a forthcoming book in the Adelphi series, Marcus Willett’s On Cyber Operations and the Responsible Use of Cyber Power, due to be published in 2024.

3 Peter W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, ‘What Clausewitz Can Teach Us About War on Social Media’, Foreign Affairs, 4 October 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-10-04/what-clausewitz-can-teach-us-about-war-social-media.

4 Ibid.

5 Seth Jones, Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran and the Rise of Irregular Warfare (New York: W. W. Norton, 2021).

6 ‘China Has Lifted a 3-year Ban on Canadian Canola, Ottawa Says’, CBC, 18 May 2022, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-canada-canola-ban-ends-1.6458746; and ‘H&M: Fashion Giant Sees China Sales Slump After Xinjiang Boycott’, BBC News, 2 July 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57691415.

7 This is discussed in Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), especially chapter 38.

8 See, for example, David Patrikarakos, War in 140 Characters (New York: Basic Books, 2017).

9 Shampa Biswas, Nuclear Desire: Power and the Postcolonial Nuclear Order (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/nuclear-desire.

10 Patrikarakos, War in 140 Characters, p. 257.

11 Thomas Zeitzoff, ‘How Social Media Is Changing Conflict’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 61, no. 9, October 2017, pp. 1978–80, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002717721392.

12 Singer and Brooking, Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media, p. 64.

13 Sarah E. Kreps, Social Media and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); and Jen Schradie, The Revolution That Wasn’t (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019).

14 Singer and Brooking, ‘What Clausewitz Can Teach Us About War on Social Media’.

15 Linus Hagstrom and Karl Gustafsson, ‘Narrative Power: How Storytelling Shapes East Asian International Politics’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol. 32, no. 4, June 2019, pp. 387–406, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09557571.2019.1623498; and Christian Reus-Smit, ‘Power, Legitimacy, and Order’, Chinese Journal of International Politics, vol. 7, no. 3, Autumn 2014, pp. 341–59, https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article-abstract/7/3/341/2863858?redirectedFrom=fulltext.

16 Christopher A. Bail et al., ‘Exposure to Opposing Views on Social Media Can Increase Political Polarization’, PNAS, vol. 115, no. 3711, 28 August 2018, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1804840115.

17 Lennart Maschmeyer, ‘The Subversive Trilemma: Why Cyber Operations Fall Short of Expectations’, International Security, vol. 46, no. 2, Fall 2021, pp. 51–90.

18 Carissa Goodwin and Dean Jackson, ‘Global Perspectives on Influence Operations Investigations: Shared Challenges, Unequal Resources’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 9 February 2022, https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/02/09/global-perspectives-on-influence-operations-investigations-shared-challenges-unequal-resources-pub-86396.

19 See Glenn Kessler, ‘The Hunter Biden Laptop and Claims of “Russian Disinfo”’, Washington Post, 13 February 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/13/hunter-biden-laptop-claims-russian-disinfo/; David Folkenflik, ‘More Details Emerge in Federal Investigation into Hunter Biden’, NPR, 9 April 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/04/09/1091859822/more-details-emerge-in-federal-investigation-into-hunter-biden; and ‘Zuckerberg Tells Rogan FBI Warning Prompted Biden Laptop Story Censorship’, BBC News, 26 August 2022, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-62688532.

20 Stephanie Kirchgaessner et al., ‘Revealed: The Hacking and Disinformation Team Meddling in Elections’, Guardian, 15 February 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/revealed-disinformation-team-jorge-claim-meddling-elections-tal-hanan.

21 Thomas Rid, Cyberwar Will Not Take Place (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

22 See, for example, Jeffrey Lewis, ‘Bum Dope, Blowback, and the Bomb’, in Harold A. Trinkunas, Herbert S. Lin and Benjamin Loehrke (eds), Three Tweets to Midnight: Effects of the Global Information Ecosystem on the Risk of Nuclear Conflict (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2020), pp. 159–78. Lewis explores how bad information, including disinformation, can backfire and influence the elites who generate it, warping perceptions and potentially undermining crisis stability.

23 Che-po Chan and Brian Bridges, ‘China, Japan, and the Clash of Nationalisms’, Asian Perspective, vol. 30, no. 1, 2006, pp. 127–56.