From Russia with fear: fear appeals and the patterns of cyber-enabled influence operations

Abstract Much research on influence operations (IO) and cyber-enabled influence operations (CEIO) rests on the assumption that state-backed digital interference attempts to generically produce sociopolitical division favorable to the perpetrator’s own interests. And yet, the empirical record of malicious IO during the 2010s show that social media manipulation and messaging takes a number of forms. In this article, we survey arguments regarding the targeting tactics and techniques associated with digital age IO and suggest that existing accounts tend to ignore the strategic context of foreign interference. We propose that state-sponsored IO are not unlike conventional political messaging campaigns in that they are an evolving flow of information rooted in several key objectives and assumptions. However, the strategic position of foreign actors as an outside force constrains opportunities for effective manipulation and forces certain operational constraints that shape practice. These outside actors, generally unable to create sensation from nothing without being unveiled, rely on domestic events tied to a broad macrosocial division (e.g. an act of race violence or protest activity) to create the conditions wherein social media manipulation can be leveraged to strategic gain. Once an event occurs, belligerents tailor steps being taken to embed themselves in relevant social networks with the goal of turning that influence toward some action. We illustrate and validate this framework using the content of the Russian Federation’s coordinated trolling campaign against the USA between 2015 and 2016. We deploy an empirical testing approach centered on fear appeals as a likely method for engaging foreign populations relative to some domestic triggering event and find support of our framework. Specifically, we show that while strong associations exist between Russian ad emissions on Facebook and societal unrest in the period, those relationships are not statistically causal. We find a temporal ordering of social media content that is highly suggestive of a fear appeals strategy responsive to macrosocial dividing events. Of unique interest, we also see that malware is targeted to social media populations at later stages of the fear appeal threat lifecycle, implying lessons for those specifically interested in the relationship between CEIO and disinformation tactics.