Thammasat University students interested in information studies, international relations, political science, sociology, communications studies, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 16 April Zoom webinar on The Modern Information Environment as a Pivotal Element in National Security: Navigating the Challenges and Seizing Opportunities.

The event, on Tuesday, 16 April 2024 at 9am Bangkok time, is presented by the Graduate School of Public Policy, The University of Tokyo, Japan.

The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of information studies.

Students are invited to register at this link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeGYBv2RQiQ-SyrUg2YvoaJ6R0bX_sxQ8epPjeaGsGOSR0K-w/viewform

The speaker will be Mr. Jānis Sārts, Director of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (Riga, Latvia).

In an interview posted last year on The Geopost, a news website covering the Western Balkans, Mr. Sārts stated:

In disinformation and in propaganda, Russia likes silence and it likes shady areas

We are one of the NATO centers that is meant to develop knowledge in a particular area, research experiment in our area of strategic communications or in other words, how to make your idea win in a conflict and war and our focus is research experimentation doctrine development, training, exercising, and for that we have 17 nations that have joined their forces to create these facts and knowledge for NATO and allies and partners, and this one of the events where we try to spread the ideas that have been created that we need to think about as a strategic communications community. […]

Well, the war is happening quite a far away, yet, if you feel in a kind Riga and in Baltics, the war feels much closer, because there have been parallels people drawing in their family history, what happens in a war when Russia attacks, that is a first thing, the second thing, we clearly see how big part of the war is information, and basically being the central focal points of the warfare and therefore it is a big opportunity for us as a center to study in a contemporary 21st century environment how it plays out and acquires many interesting ways that we made from that war. […]

It would be mistake to say that all Russian speakers in Latvia are pro-Putin, not at all, and in fact the shift has been happening in other way, they are increasingly more European that pro-Russian, but of course there are pockets of people that are still under the spell of Russian propaganda, but what has been happening during the war, there has been increased climb down on Russian propaganda outlets in Riga, so, Russian-Kremlin sponsored TV and news sites are closed in Latvia, so you cannot access them. And of course, we are hosting a large group of independent Russian journalists that are anti Putin, to provide a different perspective from a Russian language environment to what is happening, both, in Russia and as well in Ukraine. […]

Well, there is one thing about disinformation and propaganda by Russia, it likes silence and it likes shady areas, the moment you put a light on them they lose their efficiency and that has been the key methodology, both within a government as well as in a non-governmental sector to find out and expose them for what they do. There have been a number of news outlets affiliated with the “Sputnik”, with “Russia Today” that have been trying to hide their affiliation that has been exposed, and of course, that is how their efficiency and consumption level here falls, the other thing is of course understanding the links between different players in the information space, and there is a lot of research and focus happening in this country as well as in the Baltics.

It is interesting that although Baltic states have a considerable vulnerability when you think about Russian propaganda, the Russian speakers, social stratification that is used by Russia sometimes as a means, we still are one of the most resilient nations in Europe vis-a-vi Russian propaganda, so we try to make a defect into an effect.

A publication for free download posted last year on the website of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence Riga, Latvia was titled Seeking Legitimacy: Considerations for Strategic Communications in the Digital Age.

It explained, among other things:

While the Soviet Union in particular developed well-honed strategies for propaganda during the Cold War, the last ten years have seen an explosion in the speed and reach of a new breed of disinformation.

Messages now travel far and wide on social media at the speed of thought, as people look to Twitter and TikTok for news. Governments find themselves attempting to sort out which stories will pass and which stories will stick, as they struggle to bet limited resources against emerging problems.

Democracies are particularly vulnerable to disinformation because laws are designed to protect free speech, not to protect the state from speech.

Propaganda spreads easily across borders in the digital age. One recently uncovered web portal served multiple potential sympathisers in several languages; it provided pro-Kremlin activists from many countries with templates for letters opposing the destruction of Soviet monuments, including offers to help write and translate the letters into English and French.

By one estimate, dozens of well-crafted pieces of pro-Kremlin disinformation appear every week—more than any country can handle alone.

Tactical response to specific pieces of information is difficult. Doing it well requires rapid attribution of the disinformation, agile crafting of a response, and a clear grasp of what is legally permissible for that government. Teamwork across national borders can only help with the daunting task of anticipation and agility.

Even if governments choose not to mix it up in the melee of hand-to-hand information combat, with its attendant risks, most seek to create more resilient populations with media literacy programmes. Further, all NATO allies seek legitimacy when speaking publicly about national and NATO priorities, in particular countering negative NATO narratives.

Each nation will face its own calculus on which stories to engage and which to dismiss, but they would do well to remember that, just as disinformation travels across borders, so can government messages, often reaching audiences far removed from the intended recipients and unintentionally clashing with other official messages.

Indeed, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) are already having an impact on messaging practices, and we are likely to see a near future where AI/ML can craft tailored messages in any language at scale, both for good and for ill. Before that future becomes the present, governments must find ways to align messaging whenever possible to have a fighting chance against smart and scalable disinformation campaigns.

This project seeks to understand the challenges that countries are facing in the modern media environment, and how they could unify messaging to increase legitimacy and resilience.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)