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Propaganda and disinformation are not new concepts but
the speed and reach of social media in the 'fake news' era has lent
new potency to the threat and has forced militaries to grapple with
the challenges and opportunities posed by modern editing
technologies and mass communication tools. Gerrard Cowan
reports
Fake news can pose significant challenges to militaries: for
example, commercially available tools could enable adversaries to
manipulate a photo or video to create a false impression that
soldiers have carried out a particular action, which may undermine
their position in a local community. This presents obvious
operational challenges and could increase dangers to personnel.
Colonel Joshua Major is the commander of Canada's Task Force -
Latvia, placing him on one of the 'front lines' of the fake news
battle from a military perspective. Col Major explained that he
prefers the term 'disinformation' to 'fake news' because the
scourge of false stories labelled as fake news are simply the
latest episode in what has long been a challenge for militaries.
Such stories, the colonel noted, are often supported by manipulated
images and videos that are transmitted through social media or
online news sites.
"It is a concern," he said, "because it has the ability to
affect the perceptions of a population or a targeted group within a
population, and give them an understanding of a situation that's
not factual or correct".
Col Major told Jane's that he has not been surprised by
the use of online disinformation that has been encountered during
the Task Force - Latvia mission, including the use of doctored
images and even videogame footage to support a fake story. He
confirmed that the task force was aware of the potential dangers
and prepared to deal with the challenge. Similar disinformation
tactics have been used across the Baltics, in Poland, and beyond,
he noted, with individual examples varying greatly in
sophistication and quality. According to Col Major, some images and
videos "verge on the ridiculous" and are easily recognised as being
false by the casual observer.
However, he warned that there is also a much more pernicious,
subtle use of disinformation, combining some elements that may be
authentic but taking them out of context, changing the location, or
taking other measures to create a message that is fundamentally
false. "Nuggets of truth might be thrown into a [false] story,
perhaps with the context being changed, in order to make it more
believable," the colonel explained.
In these instances, the majority of the story may be factually
correct, in terms of numbers, dates, places, and other information.
However, Col Major said, it is "spun in such a way that the message
is untrue in the end … that is the real challenge in this
space: being able to understand what is real and what is fake. And
it's becoming increasingly difficult to do so".
Col Major described how fake news or disinformation is generally
aimed at targeted groups of individuals with the purpose of
communicating a particular message to them. Although he said he
believes the majority of people are unlikely to be influenced by
such effects, particularly when the image or video is poor quality,
there are people who are "borderline", meaning they may already be
susceptible to, or agree with, the message the propagandists are
conveying. In these cases the use of fake news can serve to
reinforce pre-existing beliefs. According to Col Major, this can
have a real effect: for example, if a manipulated piece of media
claims that Canadian or other soldiers have attacked a local
person, it could affect the perception of personnel in that area,
which "may have an operational impact in certain areas," he
emphasised.
In such a scenario, "our first duty is to make sure we get in
there and provide an accurate description of what actually
happened", he said, with Task Force - Latvia seeking to respond to
potentially dangerous instances of disinformation. The aim, he
highlighted, is to be completely transparent.
Col Major said troops understand and expect the threats that can
arise from disinformation, so their own morale is not likely to be
affected, even if members of the task force are the targets of such
an attack. "Troops get it," he said. "They know there will be some
fake news and disinformation put out there about them. They
understand that and they just get on with the work."