Social Media Rules of Engagement: Why Your Online Narrative is the Best Weapon During a Crisis

8Social media information operations:much more than military propaganda

Information operations and warfare, also known as influence operations, include the collection of tactical information about an adversary as well as the dissemination of propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent.

RAND Corporation

From the battlefield to the boardroom, in online and social media the ways of influence are many. Far from propaganda being a relic of the old cold war, modern-day social media influence activities routinely feed the news cycle to achieve specific offline actions.

One non-militarised form of propaganda you will be familiar with is politics, where the scramble for your vote is based on influencing your perceptions of a party or individual through staged events and rehearsed monologues that tend to promise a lot and deliver little.

Politicians in office routinely attempt to influence the public into believing self-serving information. From the threat of bushfires or terrorism to the dangerous ineptitude of the opposition party, fear mongering is a core influence enabler that is leveraged continuously. Add social media into the mix and you have all manner of visual content served up in an attempt to win your vote at the next poll.

If politicians are actively and overtly trying to influence your views and voting preferences on social media, and information operations is an accepted military function during times of war, why is it so surprising that the corporate ...