When likes are bullets and shares or tweets are bombs is to win a war.

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The internet paved the way for social media, where everyone can share information. Social media allows us to disseminate information with increased reach, especially when we set our post in public, due to the technology enabling us to interact without the context of space or time difference. We can communicate by chat or videos, and anybody can get our message any part of the world anytime. Social media evolved to be a platform or a tool for us to amplify ideologies.

Although social media, in general, isn't bad, we can't deny that some people take advantage of it to do malicious activities. We always hear about cyber security, which often focuses on cyber thefts, DoS attacks, and privacy issues but less on propaganda and falsehood. Social media has a powerful influence on public information. When bad propaganda, ideologies, and even false information, it poses a concern that one day can become prominent and disruptive to our society as social media integrates with artificial intelligence.

Some called propaganda in social media as one means of modern digital warfare. In the old days, our ancestors fought with sticks and stones and evolved to guns and bombs. Social media is becoming a new weapon of choice. We can see in social media that some groups exploit fake news to instill fear, violence and manipulate people to believe in their ideologies. Social media can change different narratives that can disrupt truths.

Social media is a place where we do business, arrange dates or just casual talks. During elections, it becomes a dumping ground for political propaganda. Companies used it as a marketing and advertising battle arena and even military for combating terrorism ideologies. Whereas we associate hacking with cyberwar but, in social media, we have like-wars. Like-wars are a means to hack people in social media with falsehood and likes.

The combination of social media, artificial intelligence, and open-source can permanently transform how we acquire information on the internet. It converges to the growing complexity of cyberwarfare, which centers on social media exploitation. Our modern warfare is warfare of stories. Wars can exist on both physical and virtual battlefields. It is a time where likes are bullets and shares are bombs. If we can't use the power of social media properly, we will lose to our war of stories.

Propaganda has existed since time immemorial. It played a crucial role in our politics for centuries. It is a deliberate means to manipulate our social habits and attitudes, an element in a democratic society. Modern propaganda is a consistent effort to shape our events that influences us through social media. We often link propaganda to a pejorative message that changes people's collective perception of someone. But propaganda is not always that. We can use good propaganda to fight back black propaganda.

We can fight false information with the good one, and it should be a collective social effort to do. To fight back disinformation and misinformation, we need to understand how content spread in social media. Some used clickbait titles that don't match the content so that people who don't read automatically share it. We want fake news and propaganda to be less noticeable in our social media, but, in some cases, we unwittingly share or tweet without checking.

Why do we fall into this trap? Our brains seem to have biases to gauge credibility. When a message is coordinated and consistent within our group of friends, we tend to take a shortcut in judging an information's credibility, presuming our friends read it. It is due to social media influence. Unknowingly, social media influence alters our behavior. We tend to change our actions to conform to societal norms, even going against the truth. We want our social media activity to be uniform to what others do. It's as though we're continuously looking for approval. We swayed by what-is-the-trend.

Social media algorithms gave us information that corresponded to our search history and activities. The issue is what we seek online and who we follow. We become prey to propaganda and falsehood when we subscribe to people or pages that propagate it. With artificial intelligence, the strength of social influence skyrockets. We act on the illusion of choice because we believe we are in control, but outcomes are already ready to set when we fall into our cognitive biases triggered by social influence. Our social choices can become pointless.

Above all, social media influence flips things upside down. When some people exploit social media influence to conform others to their ideologies, such as terrorism, we can be engaging in digital warfare. We are in an era where attention is powerful and not just online but in the real world. One way to combat fake news and propaganda is not to give attention, but it is easier said than done.

The internet is replete with swindlers, con artists, and blatant liars who rely on people's trust to spread their message. We need to slow down to avoid falling into the traps of propaganda and falsehood, which influences others to get upset with people for something they didn't do or encourage others to learn ideologies that call for violence and rebellion. We need to verify the information we receive before we attempt to share or retweet it.

Cyberwarfare can be attackers hacking banks or play stocks to extremes. We can also have traffic lights and trains that don't work. Then, power grid shutdowns and damping large volumes of water from our dams. I called it the noisy cyberwar. Often, cybersecurity experts have the means to counter it. But the silent war is quite different in that we are just starting to take it seriously. Propaganda and falsehood in our social media are changing cyberwarfare, and it is every day.

We must recognize the power of social media not only to perpetuate the outcome of the war or an election. But it decides the truth or what we perceive to be true. Our social actions shape the overall trends that determine the virality of information and what wins. If we fully grasp the predicament we are in, we must first understand the gravity of the issue and what we are battling. Even with air quotes, merely stating fake news isn't getting us anywhere.


Check out my previous blogs about Social Media


Readings

  1. David Patrikarakos, War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the twenty-first century, Basic Books.

  2. Gabby Deutch, Social Media Has Become a Global Battlefield, The Atlantic

  3. Rand Waltzman, The U.S. Is Losing the Social Media War, Time

  4. Flippo Menczer, Information Overload Helps Fake News Spread, and Social Media Knows It, Scientific American

  5. Peter Singer and Emerson Brooking, Why Social Media Is the New Weapon in Modern Warfare, Warton, UPenn

Photo Credit: Edar, Engin Akyurt, and Carrot

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