ben nimmo 01 — Transcript

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1. 0:00one of the most difficult questions when
2. 0:01you're looking at online influence
3. 0:03operations
4. 0:04is whether it actually made a difference
5. 0:07did the influence operation
6. 0:08ultimately have influence and the reason
7. 0:11it's difficult is that
8. 0:13so much of the operation is aimed at
9. 0:15changing people's perceptions
10. 0:17or changing their behavior but unless
11. 0:19you know the baseline and unless you
12. 0:21actually have
13. 0:22a very reliable way of judging what
14. 0:24people were thinking before and after
15. 0:27you can't measure the change that went
16. 0:29on and you can't separate it
17. 0:31separate it out from the impact of all
18. 0:33the other things that are happening at
19. 0:34the same time
20. 0:35information operations don't exist in a
21. 0:37vacuum they're surrounded by all the
22. 0:39real world events and all the other
23. 0:40considerations that people go through in
24. 0:42their daily lives
25. 0:43one proxy for measuring impact in this
26. 0:46way
27. 0:47would be to use engagement statistics on
28. 0:49social media you can look at numbers of
29. 0:51shares or of likes
30. 0:53and you can try and judge from that how
31. 0:55many people might have seen this content
32. 0:57but the problem is there's an online
33. 0:58marketing fake engagement
34. 1:00so it's possible to go online and buy
35. 1:03thousands of likes or thousands of
36. 1:04shares
37. 1:06which can make a post or a campaign look
38. 1:08very effective
39. 1:10where in fact the only accounts that
40. 1:12engage with that content
41. 1:13were fake accounts and we've seen
42. 1:15numerous examples of that from from
43. 1:16influence operations from different
44. 1:18countries
45. 1:18um for example there's a russian
46. 1:20operation called secondary infection
47. 1:22which would post forged documents on
48. 1:25hundreds of different social media
49. 1:27platforms
50. 1:28but as far as we've been able to judge
51. 1:30despite the wealth of content that they
52. 1:32put out there
53. 1:33very very few real users ever engaged
54. 1:36with that content
55. 1:37and some of the users who engaged called
56. 1:39it out as russian propaganda
57. 1:41or there's a chinese operation that we
58. 1:43call spamoflage dragon
59. 1:44which was across youtube twitter and
60. 1:47facebook posted
61. 1:48high volumes of content generated
62. 1:52hundreds of likes and shares and
63. 1:54comments from different accounts
64. 1:56but as far as we've been able to tell
65. 1:58all those accounts that engaged with the
66. 2:00operation
67. 2:00were part of the operation so as far as
68. 2:03we've been able to tell nobody outside
69. 2:05that operation
70. 2:05actually engage with the content at all
71. 2:08so there are problems with using the
72. 2:10numbers as basic metrics
73. 2:12but what you can do is ask yourselves
74. 2:15the question
75. 2:16where is this story spreading and who's
76. 2:19picking it up
77. 2:20and that can give you a scale of options
78. 2:22for
79. 2:23how much influence or how much impact an
80. 2:25operation is likely to have
81. 2:27so for example if a particular story
82. 2:31is only spreading in one community on
83. 2:32one social platform
84. 2:34it's not going to have much of a reach
85. 2:37to start with
86. 2:39because no matter how tightly woven that
87. 2:42community is the story's not moving
88. 2:44beyond it
89. 2:45if it's only on one platform by
90. 2:46definition you're limited to users
91. 2:48of that platform and then the next
92. 2:50question is who's picking it up
93. 2:52can you see influencers big hitters on
94. 2:55social media can you see politicians or
95. 2:57journalists can you see the mainstream
96. 2:59media
97. 3:00picking up this story and amplifying it
98. 3:02because they have a reach which goes
99. 3:04beyond social media
100. 3:06and one of the things that we've seen in
101. 3:09for example the russian information
102. 3:10operation in against the u.s in 2016
103. 3:13was the number of times that claims from
104. 3:15the russian troll file or post from the
105. 3:16russian troll farm
106. 3:18were actually quoted by the mainstream
107. 3:20media
108. 3:21when that happens the post has suddenly
109. 3:23got a much
110. 3:24greater reach because it's not limited
111. 3:26to one platform it's not limited to one
112. 3:28group
113. 3:29sometimes we've even seen in different
114. 3:30contexts politicians
115. 3:32picking up the claims of disinformation
116. 3:34operations and
117. 3:35and publicizing them in their political
118. 3:37campaigning and that's one where
119. 3:39potentially a false claim can actually
120. 3:41reach into
121. 3:42a legislative initiative or it can it
122. 3:44can come up in a parliamentary debate
123. 3:46so the way to think of influence
124. 3:49operations
125. 3:50is to look beyond the numbers and
126. 3:53to look for whether there are breakout
127. 3:57moments
128. 3:57in the operation does it stay in one
129. 3:59community or does it break out into
130. 4:00different communities does it stay on
131. 4:02one platform or does it actually break
132. 4:04out onto different social media
133. 4:05platforms
134. 4:06does it break out further into
135. 4:09the mainstream media or into political
136. 4:11debate
137. 4:12and these can give you a rule of thumb
138. 4:14for how far
139. 4:16a particular false story or a piece of
140. 4:19disinformation or an influence operation
141. 4:21is actually spreading and that's
142. 4:23important to think of because
143. 4:26it's a reminder that for all of us we
144. 4:28are potential influencers
145. 4:29if any of us are on social media and we
146. 4:32share a full story
147. 4:34we're effectively giving it the stamp of
148. 4:35our own credibility
149. 4:37we're saying hey i've seen this story
150. 4:38and i'm passing it on to you
151. 4:40that comes with risks if the story is
152. 4:43false we have
153. 4:44unwittingly amplified a falsehood which
154. 4:47could be designed to influence other
155. 4:48people
156. 4:49and it's a particularly important
157. 4:51consideration for high-powered
158. 4:53influencers who have hundreds of
159. 4:54thousands of followers
160. 4:55because they can spread a story so much
161. 4:57farther and so it's
162. 4:59really important for all of us on social
163. 5:01media particularly at times of
164. 5:03heightened
165. 5:04tension and heightened uncertainty
166. 5:06heightened pressure such as you get
167. 5:07around an election
168. 5:08to really check what we're looking at
169. 5:11and where it's coming from
170. 5:13before sharing it thinking before you
171. 5:15click is always important but in
172. 5:17election time it's even more so