COVID-19: The Information Warfare Paradigm Shift

TL;DR

The paper argues that COVID-19 has shifted the paradigm in information warfare, emphasizing public health information's influence over fake news and social media manipulation in societal impact.

Contribution

It highlights a paradigm shift in information warfare, showing that health-related information during COVID-19 has a greater societal influence than traditional disinformation tactics.

Findings

COVID-19 public health info significantly impacts public sentiment.

Social media manipulation effects are less widespread than health information influence.

The pandemic has redefined the primary battleground in information warfare.

Abstract

In Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the critical term is paradigm-shift when it suddenly becomes evident that earlier assumptions no longer are correct and the plurality of the scientific community that studies this domain accepts the change. These types of events can be scientific findings or as in social science system shock that creates a punctured equilibrium that sets the stage in the developments. In information warfare, recent years studies and government lines of efforts have been to engage fake news, electoral interference, and fight extremist social media as the primary combat theater in the information space, and the tools to influence a targeted audience. The COVID-19 pandemic generates a rebuttal of these assumptions. Even if fake news and extremist social media content may exploit fault lines in our society and create a civil disturbance, tensions between federal and local government, and massive protests, it is still effects that impact a part of the population. What we have seen with COVID-19, as an indicator, is that what is related to public health is far more powerful to swing public sentiment and create reactions within the citizenry that are trigger impact at a larger magnitude that has rippled through society in multiple directions.