Conference Program

In the midst of the pandemic health crisis, 20 percent of the world public believed that Bill Gates was planning to use COVID-19 to implement a mandatory vaccine program with tracking microchips. Some years back, the QAnon conspiracy spread on social media (SM), claiming that a cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles, Satan worshipers and child traffickers was plotting against President Trump.

Current technology and SMs make it possible to reach both larger and more granular communities, to which hybrid methods can be applied. In the digital environment, SMs has become a vital source of information for many, it has also become a source of conspiracy theories (CTs), dis/mis-information (DMI), information operations (IOs), propaganda, narrative wars, hoaxes, psychological operations (PSYOPs), and fake news. Disinformation, including CT, hoaxes, and rumors, propagate on SM just as readily as factual information.

In general, CTs, IOs, PSYOPs, and DMIs operations lead to real effects, from indecision about the usefulness of vaccines, to the denial of scientific consensus on the catastrophic effects of global climate change, and to the denial of human rights violations in Ukraine. Trust can be seen as both crucial and a vulnerable target as these operations aims to gain an advantage over adversaries or cause a change in the target group’s policy, through a cognitive process.

What emerges from this brief introduction is that there is a plexus of concepts, CT, IO, PSYOP, and DMI that are related to a common background, and it is also to be related to that of populism.