Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media

by P.W. Singer

Ben Nimmo, who has studied this issue for NATO and the Atlantic Council, has described the resultant strategy as the “4 Ds”: dismiss the critic, distort the facts, distract from the main issue, and dismay the audience.

One is to pose as the organizer of a trusted group.

The second sockpuppet tactic is to pose as a trusted news source.

Finally, sockpuppets pose as seemingly trustworthy individuals: a grandmother, a blue-collar worker from the Midwest, a decorated veteran, providing their own heartfelt take on current events (and who to vote for).

Fact, after all, is a matter of consensus. Eliminate that consensus, and fact becomes a matter of opinion. Learn how to command and manipulate that opinion, and you are entitled to reshape the fabric of the world.

ISIS’s legacy will live on long after the group has lost all its physical territory, because it was one of the first conflict actors to fuse warfare with the foundations of attention in the social media age. It mastered the key elements of narrative, emotion, authenticity, community, and inundation,

The power of a narrative depends on a confluence of factors, but the most important is consistency—the way that one event links logically to the next.

The challenge now is thus more how to build an effective narrative in a world of billions of wannabe celebrities. The first rule is simplicity.

The second rule of narrative is resonance. Nearly all effective narratives conform to what social scientists call “frames,” products of particular language and culture that feel instantly and deeply familiar.

The third and final rule of narrative is novelty.

the stronger the emotions involved, the likelier something is to go viral.

anger was the emotion that traveled fastest and farthest through the social network—and

To “win” the internet, one must learn how to fuse these elements of narrative, emotion, authenticity, community, and inundation.

Victory requires an appreciation of the nature of virality and the whimsical ways of the attention economy, as well as a talent for conveying narrative, emotion, and authenticity, melded with community-building and a ceaseless supply of content (inundation).

It is about bolstering friends and dissuading foes, just like the kind of macho showmanship that precedes a bar fight. It is about persuading someone to back off before the first punch is thrown. Failing that, it’s about weakening and embarrassing them, sapping their supporters while energizing your own.

Sounds a lot like Boyd.

In addition to dismiss, distort, distract, and dismay, these messages were intended to divide.

believability. Engineered falsehoods work best when they carry what seems like a grain of truth.

extension. The most devastating falsehoods are those that extend across vast numbers of people as well as across time.

First, for all the sense of flux, the modern information environment is becoming stable.

Second, the internet is a battlefield.

Third, this battlefield changes how we must think about information itself.

Everything is now transparent, yet the truth can be easily obscured.

Fourth, war and politics have never been so intertwined.

Fifth, we’re all part of the battle.

“lateral thinking.”