Foreign Affairs Forum Recap: The Dangers of Modern-Day Disinformation and Propaganda
The Center for National Security and Foreign Affairs’ (NSFA) 2024 – 2025 Foreign Affairs Forums series kicked off last week with Elis Vllasi, senior research associate and lecturer at NSFA, speaking on The Dangers of Modern-Day Disinformation and Propaganda.
An expert in analyzing complex challenges emanating in the grey zone as a result of influence operations, information warfare, social media weaponization, and emerging and disruptive technologies, Vllasi provided the framework of why disinformation and propaganda has worked for thousands of years and is becoming a more dangerous threat today.
Vllasi began by recounting the first recorded instance of state-sponsored disinformation, which occurred in 1274 BC during the Battle of Qadesh between Muwattalli II of Hatti and Ramses II of Egypt. Two Hittite soldiers deliberately allowed themselves to be captured by Ramses’ forces and falsely reported that the Hittite army was farther north than Qadesh. Ramses II, eager to seize Qadesh, fell into the trap and nearly lost the battle, saved only by the arrival of reinforcements. This event, recorded on five Egyptian temples, illustrates the long history of disinformation in warfare.
What we know about disinformation and propaganda.
There are a lot of definitions of disinformation, but the common denominator is that it is about giving people wrong information to get them to do something that they wouldn’t normally do. It is used to create confusion and information paralysis. But disinformation is just one tactic.
Propaganda is another one that we hear about often. It is a tactic used to influence people’s behavior through emotional responses to persuade an audience to further another parties’ agenda.
These tactics are but means to advance a strategy of cognitive warfare – “transformation of understanding and interpretation of the situation by an individual and in mass consciousness.” Getting people to the stage in which they don’t trust anything they see and hear because of all the information they have been bombarded with. The idea is that once people start not trusting anything, they are easily manipulated.
Disinformation and Propaganda is nothing new.
Looking a hundred years ago, you will find instances in which Russia and China used these tactics to paint the U.S. as a bad state actor and themselves as a model state. For example, in circa 1920’s Soviet propaganda poster showed the U.S. as being a vile society, a dangerous country that was lynching, oppressing, and discriminating against African Americans. The idea of the poster was that whoever follows the U.S. should ask themselves if they want that type of society or not. Soviet communism being the better choice. Another example was a 1950’s Chinese poster showing the Chinese and North Koreans soldiers being victorious against U.S. soldiers in the Korean War. The U.S. is but one of many Western liberal democracies that have been targets of hostile disinformation and propaganda for almost a century now.
More modern examples are from the 2016 election, where Russia established groups posing as Americans to spread disinformation and propaganda. A group called “Heart of Texas” posted images and messages about Hilary Clinton being evil and Trump being good. In 2015 and 2016, at the height of ISIS terror group’s power, ISIS promoted propaganda on social media showing one of their soldiers overlooking the Vatican (as a symbol of Christianity), showing that they were coming for Rome.
The objectives of disinformation and propaganda.
Since 1945, the U.S. and its liberal allies have created what is known as the rules-based international order and with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, the U.S. has remained in a position of primacy in the international system. Disinformation and propaganda are often employed to destabilize liberal democracies, undermine U.S. alliances across the world, and exacerbate societal divides within liberal societies. For countries like Russia and China, these tactics serve to challenge the U.S.-led rules-based international order and advance their own geopolitical agendas – an alternative model of the international order based on power.
What is causing the disinformation and propaganda age?
Scholars have advanced different theories to explain the rise of disinformation and propaganda. While social media has accelerated the spread of disinformation, some argue that human psychology also plays a significant role. People tend to seek validation within like-minded groups, and social media reinforces this by creating echo chambers. Additionally, the weakening of traditional social institutions like schools, churches, and community organizations has made individuals more susceptible to disinformation. Finally, the resurgence of great power competition, particularly with Russia and China, has intensified these efforts as these states are the main drivers of disinformation and propaganda.
What makes modern day disinformation and propaganda so dangerous?
There are four key elements that make disinformation different from what Ramses II faced in 1274 BC or the U.S. faced during the Cold War. The first, connectivity. Data from 2022 shows that 92% of the U.S. population is on the internet and 81% have some presence in social media. We have more cell phones than people in the U.S.
Computing is another reason. The rise of informational and communication technologies fueled by the adoption of Artificial Intelligence technologies enable actors to create photos, graphics, video, and sound and cheaply launch their disinformation to the whole population that has presence on the Internet. Computing has enabled hostile actors including Russia and China to create or take advantage of a complex information ecosystem to promote their narratives. The source relies on its official and semi-official institutions, and false outlets to launch disinformation and propaganda. It also relies on journalists, social influencers, foreign sympathizers and bots/trolls to amplify the narrative across the social media outlets. The tactics include launching narratives at high-volume and across multiple channels in a manner that is rapid, continuous, and repetitive, with a message that lacks commitment to objective reality and to consistency. The original source then creates new narratives that cites the information that they originally launch virally across multiple mediums to give the narrative a sense of credibility. The generation of so much user data and its availability online make it very easy for hostile actors to know a lot about us and tailor their messages to our individual preferences.
The commitment to social media adds to the danger. Americans, on average spend about 7 hours per day on Internet and over 2 hours on social media channels. With so much time on social media and the amount of information on there, it is very easy to fail at picking up on the disinformation.
Lastly, hostile actors’ access to a target population is key to the success or failure of disinformation and propaganda. What made Soviet propaganda fail in the U.S. during the Cold War was the lack of broad access to American people. Any disinformation and propaganda efforts had a very limited reach due to many filters in the media and the government that would stop Soviet propaganda from being launched in the U.S. In the modern-era, hostile actors have not only cheap access to the U.S. population through the Internet/social media but also there are no effective filters to stop disinformation and propaganda before it reaches the user.
Disinformation and propaganda impact everyone whether they realize it or not. The consequences of fostering a fertile ecosystem for disinformation and propaganda are potentially dire. Current data shows that Americans are losing trust in the wisdom of American people, untrustworthy of each other, a decline in the trust of the media across party lines, and distrust in society, whether that is in Congress, the criminal justice system, public schools, medical systems, and even churches. Consequently, our levels of democracy in the U.S. are lower today than they were fifteen years ago.
Weaknesses that have enabled hostile actors to take advantage.
The wide popular access to the internet and social media, coupled with the poor regulations of the social media industry makes easy targets for disinformation and propaganda. While most Americans can operate a computer or digital device, we are below average in media and digital literacy – the ability to analyze, reflect or act on the information, and to identify and use technology confidently, creatively and critically.
We have nurtured a very fertile ecosystem, generating disinformation and propaganda against one another, irrespective of cleavages, and successfully weakened the information pillars of society. And once you create that type of ecosystem domestically, it is easy for foreign actors to step in and wreak havoc. Lastly, while there is increasing recognition of the weaknesses we face, political polarization in the country prevents political consensus on how we go about solving these problems
How to fight back.
To fight back against disinformation and propaganda requires a whole-of-society approach, all of us, individuals, industry, the government, to act in concert to respond to cognitive warfare waged by the likes of Russia and China. And we must do all of this with our allies as disinformation and propaganda (even when it’s anti-U.S.) is not just happening in the U.S. but across the world. There needs to be a whole of alliances approach to counter the threats.
Success also requires modern updates to the legal system, as the abuse of information and communication technologies for disinformation and propaganda is moving at a rapid pace with the legislation unable to keep up. Often, hostile actors have relied on investment as a means to expand their disinformation operations. Hostile actors have either purchased various media outlets or pay the U.S. media to push a particular perspective. There needs to be foreign investment screening mechanisms so that there is transparency in information ownership or communication. And finally, an effective response to cognitive warfare requires a long-term investment in digital literacy and media education so that individuals are equipped with the skills to better discern truth from disinformation.
To watch this forum’s full lecture, click here.
The 2024-2025 National Security Forums series will bring in experts from across the UT campus and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to discuss their research findings on disinformation and propaganda. Understanding the use of these tools is crucial to U.S. national security, as it empowers individuals and institutions to recognize and combat deceptive narratives that undermine democratic processes and societal stability. To view this year’s lineup, visit the Forum Series webpage here.