On Russian strategy in the social media battlefield

Malign manipulation of the information environment is an urgent security threat facing western democracies. This talk examines why and how state and nonstate actors have harnessed emerging technologies – social media platforms in particular – to shape the information environment for strategic ends. Weaponization of disinformation is neither new nor warfare in the traditional sense, but digital aspects in particular have confounded western efforts to manage it.

Broderick McDonald

Broderick McDonald is a Research Fellow at Kings College London’s XCEPT Research Programme and a doctoral researcher in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford where he researches conflict, terrorism, and political violence. Outside of this, he is a Visiting Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute’s Centre for Emerging Technologies and Security (CETaS) and a Research Affiliate with the Rothermere American Institute.

Matthew Hepplewhite

I am a doctoral student at Merton College. I am researching the kind of people (in terms of sociodemographic characteristics, with a particular focus on education, former occupation, and class) who act as politicians in modern Britain, testing whether they are the kind of people whom Britons want to act as their representatives (at the experimental and electoral levels), and exploring what British politicians publicise - and don't publicise - about themselves with regard to the sociodemographic characteristics listed above.

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