Psychological Operations in the Cyber Age
Hi everyone
In this article, I will talk about the concept of PsyOps, which is started to be discussed frequently in the industry since 2016. I would like to start with the following introduction;
The phenomenon we call “cyber world” has three legs. The first is ‘information’, which we can count as the fabric of our society. The second pillar is information technologies that enable the transfer of this information. If information is a brick, information technologies are the cement of this business. The third and last leg is the human being, the most active element of the cyber world, by consuming this information, processing it, producing new information and transferring it back to the system.
These three elements come together to form what we call the cyber world. Therefore, if we want to talk about cyber security as an integrated discipline, we have to consider the safety and security of the human element as well as information and IT elements.
Let’s start our topic now.
If you try to research this subject, you will come across many terms that seem to mean the same thing. Propaganda, psychological operations, psychological warfare, perception management, perception operations, influence operations, strategic communication, public relations etc…
Indeed, the historical development of these words are unclear. Mostly, these words have been abandoned over time due to their negative image, and other names have been created to be used instead. In other words, they all have a common end goal. However, I believe that a distinction should be made between the concepts in order to classify these methods, which can take many different forms today.
I will base three concepts in this article series; propaganda, psychological operations, perception management. Now let’s talk about their differences.
First of all, the concepts we need to distinguish are propaganda and psychological operations. In fact, these terms are often used synonymously. Or, it is said that the psychological operation is “planning and carrying out necessary propaganda activities in a wider scope”. However, I will describe the two in a different way that I have seen useful in my case studies.
Propaganda
It is the name of the committee established in 1718 to carry out the missionary activities of the Catholic Church abroad. It is used as an abbreviation of the sentence “Congregatio de Propaganda Fide” in Latin, meaning “congregation to spread faith”. The English word “propagate”, which comes from the same root as this word, means “to spread, to multiply”. In other words, it can be said that all activities carried out with the aim of spreading any belief are propaganda. As such, it does not seem to have a negative meaning in its essence.
The most common form of propaganda we encounter today is its use in politics. Political parties carry out many propaganda activities, especially during elections and referendums. For example, below you can see two propaganda posters about the 2017 constitutional referendum in Turkey.
As another example, below is the 2002 election speech of the Liberal Democrat Party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8A94DMb8IY
Although propaganda activities are not limited to these, let’s list the characteristics of propaganda through these two examples:
- Its purpose is to persuade and take action through argument.
- It is mostly in written or visual format. The use of mass media is widespread.
- The message is supported with elements such as catchy words, slogans, songs and visuals to propagate the idea.
- It is open. Its intention can easily be understood.
Psychological Operation
The benefits of psychological superiority in warfare have been known since ancient times. However, the conceptualization of psychological operations only took place in the 20th century. The word propaganda also got its share from the manipulative activities carried out under the name of psychological operations during the First World War, and it still hasn’t gotten rid of the bad reputation it gained in those days.
In World War I, most of the armies of the Entente states consisted of colonial soldiers brought from countries such as Africa and India. Therefore, propaganda activities at that time were mostly targeting colonial soldiers. The aim was to dissolve the motivation of these soldiers, who were fighting against their consent for their imperial countries.
Below you can see a propaganda brochure prepared for the soldiers of Australian and New Zealand nationality, which was a British colony at that time.
Although at first glance it resembles the propaganda examples we have examined before, it has an important difference. The message is arranged to elicit a specific emotional response. The mood that the soldier will be in at that moment has been determined and the message has been prepared in a way that will exploit this emotion. The goal is to introduce thought patterns into the soldier’s mind that will interact with emotions. Thus, the confidence of the military in the imperial state will be shaken. As a result, he will either flee from the war or surrender, or resist his commander, or he will neglect his duties in this war he is already in involuntarily.
This manipulative type of propaganda that appeals to the emotions is also frequently encountered in politics. For example, one of the “Vote Leave” campaigns during the 2016 Brexit referendum is as follows.
Apart from this particular use of propaganda, there are other forms of psychological operations. In fact, every activity carried out to reveal certain emotions in the target audience is a psychological operation. With this feature, psyops elements are not limited to written/visual communication tools. For example, Hannibal’s war elephants and Japanese Kamikaze attacks are psychological operations as well as destructive abilities.
Psychological operations also form the basis of the strategies of terrorist organizations. It is common for them to use civilian casualties in conflicts as an element of agitation (Agitprop). In addition, the use of child militia is another common tactic. However, all acts of terrorism are planned according to the psychological impact they will create. For example, when the Al-Askari Mosque in Baghdad was bombed by terrorists in 2006, no deaths occurred. But the Mosque is one of the holiest places for Shiite Muslims. Therefore, after the attack, sectarian conflicts started in the country and caused the death of thousands of people.
To list the characteristics of the psychological operation:
- Its purpose is to influence behavior by revealing certain emotions in the person.
- The content of the messages creates emotional interaction in the target audience.
- Written/visual media may be used, but the tools are not limited thereto. Depending on the situation, anything can be a psyops element, including an action itself.
- It is covert and manipulative. Its intention is not immediately clear.
As can be seen, psychological operations are actually quite different from classical propaganda in terms of both method and result. Its manipulative nature and not being limited to any tool make it much more dangerous.
Although there is no such distinction in the literature, I find it useful to make such a classification when evaluating the content of messages. But the thing to consider is that there are no sharp lines between these two classes. I think it would be more accurate to describe the boundaries as a spectrum rather than as distinct classes.
In my next article, we will talk about the applications of these activities in cyberspace with examples.
See you in the next article.
