Białoruskie i rosyjskie działania dezinformacyjne wobec Polski w kontekście antyreżimowych protestów przeciwko Alaksandrowi Łukaszence

Since August 2020, the political situation in Belarus has become one of the key elements of Russia’s information warfare against the transatlantic community. The main target of Belarusian and Russian information and psychological operations is Poland, repeatedly accused of interfering in the internal affairs of Belarus, inspiring a colour revolution, waging a hybrid war, supporting separatism, historical revisionism, preparation of military intervention or organising an armed coup and assassination of Lukashenko. The main research problem of this article is the answer to the question: what disinformation activities are Belarus and Russia conducting against Poland in connection with the political situation in Belarus after the falsification of the results of the presidential elections of 9 August 2020. The author analyses, among others, why Poland has become the main target of Belarusian and Russian disinformation operations, what the goals are of these activities, on what issues the Belarusian and Russian information narrative towards Poland is focused, and what the effectiveness is of these influence operations.

Information Warfare in Health Sector – Sifting ‘Real’ from ‘Fake’ News (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED Information warfare (IW) involves manipulation, destruction, or denying access to information altogether while maintaining the target’s trust. Psychological operations, a type of IW, concern the majority of the public as it aims to degrade their morale through infodemic and fake news. Fake news related to healthcare was present even before the COVID-19 pandemic. A broad range of content comes under it, like communication of inaccurate information with or without any intention to cause harm, mistaken interpretation of satires, and information spread with definitive socio-political agenda. We discuss the various facets of fake news including its burden in the health sector, pathogenesis, the different psychological perspectives of its spread, and strategies to counter it.

Covert Action and Grand Strategy

Throughout history, covert action has been a critically important instrument used by states to achieve their strategic aims without the use of military force. This chapter explores the little-known role that covert action played during the rise of the United States from the American Revolution to the First World War, as well their use by Great Britain and Germany to influence US foreign policy after the United States had become a great power. The chapter explores how covert operations aided US efforts to expand across North America and European covert missions to block America’s rise through exploiting divisions within US society and derailing American plans to expand its borders to the Pacific Ocean. The chapter then explores how prior to the First World War, Britain and Germany used covert psychological operations to sway American opinion to their respective sides. Once war broke out, these operations intensified as Britain sought to convince the United States to enter the conflict as their ally while German operations sought to encourage American neutrality. Once America entered the war, Germany switched to sabotaging American operations to derail US war production. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the future of covert action in the digital age and the role of cyberattacks in light of the Russian attack on the 2016 US presidential election.

THE CONCEPT OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE STATE INFORMATION POLICY AND ENSURING INFORMATION SECURITY OF UKRAINE (IN THE CONDITIONS OF THE CONFLICT WITH THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION)

The events analysis since the beginning of the aggravation of relations between Ukraine and Russia evidences about the inefficiency of information policy, incoordination of activity of different subjects of ensuring the information security of the state, the weak presence of Ukraine in the world information space etc. At the same time, the problems of ensuring the information security of the state and realization of effective set of counter-propaganda measures, realization of information policy, aimed at consolidating Ukrainian society and the international community for the purpose of suppression of armed aggression are identified by the higher military-political governance of Ukraine as the most priority. Various internal and external factors negatively affect at the ability of Ukraine to adequately respond to challenges and risks in the military sphere. The insufficient and unprofessional efforts of Ukraine’s state authorities in the field of counteraction to the Russian Federation’s propaganda and information-psychological operations are the most important ones. That’s why there’s necessity of development the system of opinions and determination of the plan of the higher military-political governance’s of Ukraine actions regarding the implementation of state information policy and providing of information security of Ukraine and legislative definition of a conceptual document. Besides the importance of this fact consist in that after the restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine the main aims of military policy will be prevention the emergence of new armed conflicts, systematic strengthen the state's defense capability and increasing the role and authority of Ukraine in the international area.

Enhanced cardiac vagal tone in mental fatigue: Analysis of heart rate variability in Time-on-Task, recovery, and reactivity

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) has been suggested as a useful tool to assess fatigue-sensitive psychological operations. The present study uses a between and within-subject design with a cognitively demanding task and a documentary viewing condition, to examine the temporal profile of HRV during reactivity, Time-on-Task (ToT), and recovery. In the cognitive task group, participants worked on a bimodal 2-back task with a game-like character (the Gatekeeper task) for about 1.5 hours, followed by a 12-minute break, and a post-break block of performance (about 18 min). In the other group, participants watched documentaries. We hypothesized an increasing vagal-mediated HRV as a function of Time spent on the Gatekeeper task and no HRV change in the documentary viewing group. We also analyzed the trial-based post-response cardiac activity as a physiological associate of task-related motivation. Relative to the documentary-viewing, ToT was associated with an elevated level of subjective fatigue, decreased heart rate, and increased HRV, particularly in the vagal-mediated components. Based on fatigued participants’ post-error cardiac slowing, and post-error reaction time analyses, we found no evidence for motivation deficits. The present findings suggest that the parasympathetic branch of the autonomous nervous system functioning as a relaxation system tends to be activated under increasing mental fatigue. In addition, the study shows that many HRV indices also seem to change when individuals are engaged in a prolonged, less fatiguing activity (e.g. documentary viewing). This finding emphasizes the relevance of comparisons/control conditions in ToT experiments.

APPROACH TO VERIFICATION OF THE TARGET AUDIENCE MODEL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL INFLUENCE IN SOCIAL NETWORKS

Modern planning of psychological operations is not possible without the use of information technology, such as modeling tools that ensure the accuracy of planned operations and predict their results. Modern technologies also help to facilitate the perception of information through visualization. Any information, especially on social networks, is easier for analysts to process if it is presented in a schematic form. For example, the target audience of psychological influence in social networks can be represented by a graph. The article solves the urgent problem of verifying the model of the target audience of psychological influence in social networks. The approach to model verification is based on a combination of cognitive criteria of topological structure. Classical methods of verification of mathematical models are used for verification of mathematical calculations. Data visualization is taken as the basis of the cognition criterion. The article presents a method of graph visualization, which sets the mathematical model of the target audience. Visual representation of the graph not only promotes better assimilation, but also speeds up the analysis of the collected information about the target audience through automation. The data obtained during the run of the model are compared with real data, thus confirming the conformity of the behavior of the model to real phenomena. Validation of the model with the help of software was performed by tracing the model. The adequacy of the model is based on the possibility of analysis of the target audience by the user according to the characteristics of individual actors, which make it possible to determine their role and analyze the structure of the target audience as a whole. The theory of analysis of social networks is the basis of the choice of characteristics of the target audience. To assess the adequacy of the model, two characteristics of the target audience were chosen, as centrality in mediation and centrality in its own vector. The results of the calculations are presented using the software application Gephi. Data from the VKontakte social network were used as input data to check the adequacy of the model.

Information Wars and Psychological Operations as the Basis for New Generation Hybrid Wars

The development of global competition in a multilevel format on the platform of “hybrid wars” makes us assess the prospects for the evolution of such a component of them as “information wars”. For a long time now, information wars have remained an integrating platform for influencing the social systems of competing countries, and the possibilities of both destructive influence and the construction of alien, hostile socio-information communities are greatly enhanced by digital integrated communications technologies. In these conditions, the fundamental task is to consider the development of information war technologies in historical continuity and taking into account not only the evolution of information society technologies, but also its socio-political content. The strategic meaning of the evolution of American approaches to information warfare in political and military-political strategy is the maximum adaptation of doctrinal decisions to current political and military-political needs. Doctrinal design has always been secondary in comparison with the current tasks and has changed relatively quickly. Political legalization of methods of active informational influence on a competitor and adversary — the main goal that it has served. In the current version of the information society, the value of information wars is also determined by the fact that, due to the high socio-constructivist potential of digital integrated communications, the technological basis of the information society, they (IoT) become the most comfortable platform for the integration of tools of various nature and technological content in hybrid wars. The operational flexibility and universalism of information wars as a genre, their ideological omnivorousness, the ability to reduce the response of the world community through the mechanisms of information wars makes them a universal tool for achieving military and political superiority.

The evolution of US political propaganda in the context of geopolitical confrontation of the post-bipolar era

The article analyzes the evolution of the propaganda of the United States of America after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War marked the beginning of a new era. For America, it was an opportunity to establish itself as the only superpower of that time. Realizing the full force of informational and psychological influence, the United States began to build a policy that would focus on psychological operations without the use of physical weapons and force. In addition, the claim to the title of a single superpower and the desire to reduce the influence of the Russian Federation on the countries of the post-Soviet space forced to bear the burden of an state which participate in resolving any conflicts that may arise.