Handbook of disinformation campaigns
With the rise of information technology and the ever-increasing accessibility of the Internet to the masses, the dissemination of false information is also becoming increasingly common. Collectively, these are commonly referred to as disinformation, fake news or hoaxes, and users often treat these terms as synonyms and freely confuse them with each other. It is true that all these terms are related to false information and have a similar meaning, but they are not really synonyms in the true sense of the word.
Foreword
The discussion on the issue of hybrid threats and disinformation has brought up a whole range of terms that we have not had, have not used, or have used in a different sense in the Slovak language so far. Terms such as disinformation, hoax, fake news or troll, bot or cyborg are often freely confused with each other, used as synonyms, and few people, except perhaps experts in this field, can recognise and use them correctly.
Disinformation is one of the greatest threats we face today as a state and as a society, and at the same time, effectively combating disinformation and building society’s resilience to it are goals that we have so far only been able to achieve very slowly and partially. However, a step towards achieving these objectives can also be seen as a step towards the correct differentiation and understanding of the concepts and the relationships between them.
This publication builds on the previous work of the National Security Analytical Centre of the Slovak Information Service, Stratpol, and other organizations that have developed terminological dictionaries of hybrid threats in Slovak conditions, describing and defining individual terms related to disinformation campaigns. The aim of the present publication is not only to define the key terms, but also to explain the correlations and differences between them, putting them in context and illustrating them with concrete examples from the practice of disinformation campaigns.
The publication is intended primarily for staff of state institutions who come into contact with the issue of disinformation dissemination, as well as for the general public and anyone wishing to clarify the often confusing terminology of hybrid threats. It is prepared with the support of the Ministry of Defence of the Slovak Republic, within the project “Strengthening the Slovak Republic’s Resilience to Hybrid Threats from Russian Actors – Disinformation Campaigns on Social Networks”. It is a follow-up to the workshop “Propaganda tools of Russian actors on social networks – how to recognize them and how to counter them?”, conducted by the Institute for Central Europe on 7 October 2021 in Bratislava, as well as to the study “How to counter controlled disinformation on social networks? Experiences from Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova”.
Implemented with financial support from the Ministry of Defence of the Slovak Republic under the subsidy programme. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of the Institute for Central Europe.
The entire document by the authors Tomáša Baranca, Kataríny Cséfalvayovej and Frederick Hardman Lea can be found here:
Implemented with financial support from the Ministry of Defence of the Slovak Republic under the subsidy programme. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of the Institute for Central Europe.