Psychological warfare in the area of social information media: The aspect of hybrid warfare

Abstract

In recent years, the actuality of the term and concept of hybrid warfare does not abate in the professional military and political public. Although the concept of hybrid warfare still has an unclear and imprecisely defined meaning, it could be said that the content of the term is closely related to the terms of information and psychological warfare. At the beginning of the 21st century, the information space evolved and thereby offered possibilities for conducting war activities. Social media have become a new battlefield in which not only state and social factors are involved, but also numerous informal groups and individuals. In the socio-information media space, the main means of warfare are psychological activities and operations. There is an attempt to achieve a number of general hybrid warfare objectives, which are primarily focused on avoiding the occurrence or minimizing the duration of a regular (militarized) way of waging warfare by the use of psychological techniques. The field of social media has become a platform for a variety of psychological activities and processes of forced, misleading, alienating and defensive character. In addition to well-known techniques of propaganda and persuasion, social media have rendered an opportunity to develop a new approach to manipulation known as social engineering. Social engineering, although primarily designed for 'war between organizations', has a special place and role in the process of hybrid warfare. It can be concluded that psychological warfare has a central role in the concept of hybrid warfare, and the reasons for this claim should be sought in the set goals and individual characteristics of the new concept of warfare, and also in the nature of social media.

Keywords

• hybrid warfare
• information warfare
• psychological warfare
• social media
• social engineering