Information Warfare and Fake News is nothing new but the non-stop news cycle and our access to it is. Pizzagate, suspicion surrounding the Mueller Investigation and a president known for bashing the media have contributed to the resurgence. Here’s how you can protect yourself
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Here’s a newsflash: Information Warfare and fake news is not new
“All warfare is based on deception,” declared the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu in The Art of War (5th century BC). And deception goes back even farther—to Adam and Eve—which is to say misinformation and influence campaigns didn’t start with Pizzagate and the 2016 Presidential Election. What is new (and real by the way) is the dissemination of fake news via our 24-hour news cycle and our nonstop access to it.
As more of our lives migrate online, many believe the use of disinformation as a tool of persuasion and weapon of influence has reached new heights. We have more access to news than ever before—from mainstream news channels to social media to radio to podcasts. And it’s easier than ever to reach us—at any hour of the day or night—on any one of our many Internet-connected devices (think smartphone, tablet, laptop, smartwatch, Alexa, and more).
A recent study by the American Psychological Association 1 found that 66% of Americans are stressed out about the future of the country, and the constant consumption of news was pinpointed as a major contributor. It looks like breaking news is breaking us. And now, with so much misinformation being put out as truth, we are in an even more entrenched era of “headline stress disorder,” a term coined by author and therapist Steven Stosny, PhD in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. “For many people, continual alerts from news sources, blogs, social media, and alternative facts feel like missile explosions in a siege without end,” says Dr. Stosny in an Op-Ed published in the Washington Post.2 A lot of negative feelings like anxiety, hopelessness, despair, sadness is fueled by being tuned in to the 24-hour news cycle.
Information warfare is as old as warfare itself, and even affected George Washington posthumously. Three days after the Civil War began, on April 15, 1861, an article was published in the New York Herald that roiled the nation. It stated that the body of George Washington had been removed from his tomb, taken to the mountains of Virginia to be interred there. Given the tense political climate of the time, this early form of “click bait” likely spurred the sale of more papers, but also served to increase heightened tensions between the North and South.
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The Changing Landscape of Truth: Social Media’s Slippery Slope
The rise of the Internet and social media has compounded the problem of fake news. The traditional news model— where we get information from a small number of outlets—has been upended by today’s media environment. Today, the channels are multifold, the messages constant, and often contradictory. We are faced, many times, with paradoxical messages, and it can become easier to cling to a simpler fiction than dissect a more complex reality. Here, two recent examples:
- Pope Francis endorsed President Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
- Former President Barack Obama banned the pledge of allegiance in schools before leaving office.
Right? WRONG. These are just two ‘famous’ fake news stories out of hundreds, which were shared millions of times of social media platforms like Facebook.
Since August 2017, 67% of Americans receive at least some of their news via social media, according to research from the Pew Research Center.3 Spreading misinformation messages to influence what people believe and how they behave—in ways they would not otherwise—like believing that global warming is not real despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, means that we are vulnerable to manipulation in ways that we are just beginning to fully appreciate.
“Social media allows you to reach virtually anyone and to play with their minds.”
-Uzi Shaya, former senior Israeli intelligence officer
The quote appeared in a recent New Yorker article. Shaya continued adding, “You can do whatever you want. You can be whoever you want.” The advent of the Internet opened a new arsenal of tools that can be used for manipulation including online hacking, aliases, bots, unattributed websites filled with fabricated content, social media avatars posting fake news.
Influence is the game, and information warfare is how this new type of war is won. To be able to plant seeds of ideas in people’s heads, have them question it and attempt to change their minds, is now the seat of power. And regulations have not kept pace with advances in technology, creating a Wild West anything-goes mindset.
These types of persuasion tactics have become big business. Social media, according to security experts P.W. Singer and Emerson Brooking in their book LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media has “become a battlefield where information itself is weaponized.”4