Assignment XXXXXXXXXXInformation Warfare CSI 6206.pdf MainHeading

Running Head: INFORMATION WARFARE                        1
INFORMATION WARFARE         2
    
INFORMATION WARFARE ATTACK VECTORS AND INFLUENCE OF DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS    
Table of Contents
1. Abstract and Keywords    3
2. Introduction and Background    4
3. Hypothesis    4
4. Methods, Techniques and Research Applied    5
5. Information Warfare and Elections    5
5.1 Australian federal elections 2019 and information warfare    7
5.2 Examples of Information Warfare in Other Elections    11
6. Results    12
7. Conclusion    15
8. References    16
    
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1. Abstract and Keywords
Abstract
Elections are a very sensitive issue when it comes to the political and democratic grounds of a nation and therefore, the voters are advised to be aware of the manifestoes and other information regarding the candidates so they do no vote any undeserving candidate. However, people’s view are now being silently manipulated and adjusted by the political parties using various information warfare vectors and strategies. Donald Trump elected as the President of U.S even after the political wind was against him presents a very recent example of how Information Warfare can manipulate people and elections. This articles looks deeply into the methods and vectors that are being used in order to influence the elections unduly using Information Warfare Strategies.
Keywords: Elections, Information Warfare Strategies, U.S elections, twitter as political ground
2. Introduction and Background
The 2016 U.S elections shocked the world after the winning of Donald Trump as the President of United States. It was a watershed moment for several reasons, some of them were just fake allegations while some were true but cannot be characterised as illegal however, morally can be sorted as the unfair means.
There were accusations of hacking, codification as fake news and it was even predicted that there was Russian involvement in the elections. However, it was later proved that Russia tipped those 2016 U.S elections to Mr. Trump. Some call it information world war and even media under the influence of political parties may not focus towards it but it is pretty clear that this is nothing but simply Information Warfare strategy played by Russia (Giridharadas, 2019).
Information Warfare (IW) is nothing but the strategic and tactical use of information to gain an advantage. This may also be understood as cyber warfare, cyber-attack or electronic warfare. IW targets the greatest strength and greatest weakness of the opponents. During elections this strategy has been prove revolutionary, however it is limited mostly towards the western countries. It is effective because the methods used are undeniable, cost-effective and easy to perform as seen from the Russian influence in the 2016 U.S presidential elections (Raleigh, 2019).
3. Hypothesis
Information Warfare has been observed in many areas and in dynamic forms such as cyber tack and cyber warfare. However, during elections, it becomes a very sensitive yet undisputable issue because this does not harm any individual and also does not plant to violate any laws and regulations; instead, it is simply the manipulation of platforms that provides potential users such as Twitter, Media and some other social media platforms also. Therefore, this study hypothesises that “Are there numerous effective Information Warfare strategies that can be implied in order to influence the decisions regarding whether to vote, whom to vote and on the basis of what to vote for.”
4. Methods, Techniques and Research Applied
This study do not include data from any personally conducted surveys since, it can be biased and also is time consuming instead, the best possible alternative have been selected in order to extract data and present it in accordance to the hypothesis. For extracting the data related to political backgrounds and previous elections, popular media blogs and newspapers have been considered. Further, to collect the literary data such as models and other vectors, Google scholar has been used as the potential database. Likewise, other websites that are academically accepted has been considered for extracting the data. In order to maintain consistency with the data a certain set of keywords were followed and the appeared results were then qualitatively analysed.
Once, the data was collected it was analysed in terms of patterns, connections and relationship with other similar data. Since, the study do not involve any statistical analysis because it is a qualitative analysis therefore, patterns were identified using keywords in the context. Further, a compare and contrast method was used in order to find relationship of data with the hypothesis that is, are there IW strategies that can influence the elections. Likewise, in order to present a conclusion, Grounded theory was used so that why a certain phenomenon occurred can be explained and this was done by studying election patterns of different nations.
5. Information Warfare and Elections
Traditional modes of campaigning and promotion during election are now becoming ineffective due to their diluted effect on public and also due to busy lifestyle; people do not focus much towards them. The main motive of these was to promote a political party that is bringing a political party into spotlight so that people can identify the candidate and direct their vote to him/her. In much simpler terms, it is just a mode of attracting people by the promotion of their election manifestos. Another aspect of promotion of a candidate can be bringing down the potential opponent by allocating certain cases, lawsuits or federal charges against him or her so that they are out of the list.
No matter what could be the mode of promotion of a candidate, every act is supported by information and sources. As mentioned by Kartik, Squintani and Tinn (2015), comparing election trends of other nations has resulted to the conclusion that by the act of deliberately spreading false or misleading information has been an effective tool adopted by the parties in order to bring down the reputation of potential opponent candidate. In order to do so, help has been taken from trusted sources such as media channels, print media and even the newly emerging social media. The allegations placed on the opposite candidate are mostly false and are posed on the opponent for a shorter duration that is until the election campaigning is going.
This manipulation of information is called as ‘Information Warfare’. This is different from other warfare as it does not risks lives and is undoubtedly a non-questioner mode of manipulating people. Out of all other platforms used for IW, social media has proven to be the most effective platform. This due to the fact that more than 65% of U.S population is connected with social media and among that 65% youth and elder people are most. As...