which has been defined by UNESCO as “information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person, social group, organization, or country.” This is different from misinformation, which is “information that is false but not created with the intention of causing harm,” and it may be disseminated in the belief that is true. Another category is mal-information, that is “based on reality, but is used to inflict harm,” such as true information that violates someone’s privacy without a public interest justification.2 (The work of gossip columnists and paparazzi may be included in this category.) Disinformation has long been used by governments as a weaponized form of communication that is a tool of warfare. Today’s technologies make this more pervasive and more effective.
Some other terms used in this book are these:
“troll”: communicator, human or mechanical, of inflammatory material designed to provoke or harass;
“bot”: performs automated tasks, such as high-speed, high-volume retweeting or attacks on a computer network;
“deepfake”: video and speech combination for which a computer has learned appearance and speech patterns of the targeted subject. (If you see a realistic online video of Barack Obama endorsing Donald Trump, you may assume it is a deepfake.)
Another principal focus of this book is war journalism. With so much recent emphasis on disinformation as a way to affect public opinion, the importance of the news media is sometimes overlooked. When considering information at war, a holistic approach is needed. Despite efforts in numerous countries to undermine the credibility of journalists – through tactics that include labeling their work “fake news” and in some places imprisoning them (or worse)3 – much of the global public still uses news coverage as an important element in shaping opinions about wars near and far.
Among the constituencies of conflict are those who fight wars, those who use their power to bring about and manage armed conflict, those who disseminate information about wars, and those who consume that information. This book examines slices of their shared stories, beginning in the mid twentieth century, when the rise of radio, and its bards such as Murrow and Shirer and Sevareid, marked the start of the era in which broadcasting brought timely information that helped redefine publics’ perceptions of the nature and costs of war.4
War’s evolution has been shaped by shifts in geopolitics and by advances in technology. In scattered combat zones, states fight among themselves, against non-states (such as Al Qaeda), and sometimes against their own people (the Syrian War that began in 2011 being one example). As for the tools of war, we have moved from the longbow to the ballistic missile, and in the information universe from the messenger racing on horseback to the satellites and cellphones that reach billions.
Information at war has always been a weapon in itself – generating anger, sorrow, determination, and other facets of mass psychology that can influence the outcomes of conflict. As we will see, in the twenty-first century roles for information have become truly integral, rather than merely supplemental, parts of warfare.
Information can now circle the globe in moments, and few boundaries can stop it.
More significant than the gadgets of communication technology are the ways in which global publics have been able to use information tools to understand and affect the course of conflict. They have become more than spectators. Billions of people have devices that allow them not only to watch warriors in action, but also to tell potentially vast audiences what they themselves are seeing and add their own comments (some accurate, some not) to the flow of war-related information. Individual combatants themselves sometimes describe their views.5 Distances between fighters, professional information providers, and the public continue to shrink, while the ranks of those who share information have expanded dramatically. Twitter and its kin have become, in some cases, instruments of war.
Intensified scrutiny, both objective and biased, changes the ways in which wars are conducted. No conflict is detached from politics, and information helps tighten the connection. Information can alter the level of accountability of those who authorize and pay for wars, as well as the responsibilities of those who do the fighting. Those who decide to wage war must be able to influence – if not wholly control – information.
Henry Kissinger wrote that what has great significance in world affairs “is not only the number of people with access to information; it is, even more importantly, how they analyze it. Since the mass of information available tends to exceed the capacity to evaluate it, a gap has opened up between information and knowledge and, even beyond that, between knowledge and wisdom.”6 Ideally, thoughtful consideration of information at war will help to close that gap.
One slice of this book’s overall topic is “media and war,” which has been the subject of many studies that focus on a relationship that is in some ways symbiotic but usually maintains some level of separation between its two elements. “Media” in such analyses is usually equated with news media, and the journalism of war is a rich field that continues to produce important examinations of how wars are fought and managed. Especially in democracies, independently gathered and reported news content has long been a factor in how wars are perceived. Journalists’ depictions of a particular victory or defeat can influence public opinion and shape the course of a war. The accuracy or inaccuracy of that reporting may have profound effect on policy. This was the case during the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, among other instances. That coverage and other reporting from the Vietnam War (addressed in chapter 1) has seen, over the years, its accuracy challenged,7 and it has clearly contributed to increasingly adversarial dealings between press and government. This dynamic tension fosters an environment in which the motives and even the patriotism of the protagonists have been called into question. When carried to extreme levels, such vilification may not only affect war-making but also jostle the foundations of civil society.
Fast and easy access to information through social media and other venues has changed the role of gatekeepers – traditionally the news organizations through which information has long been channeled and filtered on its way to the public. The universe of information providers is much larger today, and it keeps growing, which means the concept of “information hegemony” is increasingly obsolete. This increased number of information sources sometimes contributes to a “clash of emotions,” which can shape a political environment in ways that affect whether or how a war is fought.8
This has led to non-journalistic media influencing warfighting in new ways. Even governments that have long controlled the information that reaches the public have learned that they can be circumvented with increasing frequency. Censors can be eluded, and firewalls can be scaled – not always, but frequently enough to broaden the range of voices making themselves heard about war.9
In this volume, perhaps more significant than conventional issues related to news media performance during war is the weaponization of information itself. We have moved into an era beyond news media monopolization of information about armed conflict. “Information” in this context has, to an unprecedented degree, become much more than “news” as we have traditionally known it, and it is affecting warfare in ways that continue to evolve at a brisk pace. Because information has become so easy to gather – or to invent – and disseminate, state and non-state actors can wield it to stir anger, sabotage elections, and soften or stiffen the resolve of citizens who are too often treated as mere pawns in politics and conflict.
Can information start a war? Not on its own, but it certainly can influence the likelihood of one. When the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers in the United States were screaming for war against Spain in 1898, they affected the American political environment and nudged, if not pushed, President William McKinley toward war.10 Today, an individual or group putting
