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2 understanding of information…
Information-as-data understanding, which largely
sees information as a quantity or commodity to
be stored, transmitted, used, and of course defended.
Information-as-perception/image view, which
largely sees information in terms of its value for
shaping beliefs, perceptions, and images.
Elgin Brunner and Myriam Dunn
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Information Warfare…
From Wikipedia
IW is a concept involving the use and management of IT in pursuit of a competitive
advantage over an opponent.
May involve collection of tactical information, assurance(s) that one's own
information is valid, spreading of propaganda or disinformation to demoralize or
manipulate the enemy and the public, undermining the quality of opposing force
information and denial of information-collection opportunities to opposing forces.
Information warfare is closely linked to psychological warfare.
Tends to extend into the realms of Electronic Warfare, Cyber Warfare,
Information Assurance and Computer Network Operations / Attack / Defense.
The much broader term is "Information Operations" which, although making use of
technology, focuses on the more human-related aspects of information use,
including social network analysis, decision analysis and the human aspects of
Command and Control.
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Fact and perception differs…
In the IW context,
‘data’ is associated with a thing, and discriminates between
different states of the thing it describes. It consists of
attributes of the events or objects it describes.
‘knowledge’ is an attribute of a human. Knowledge is a set of
interacting mindsets about data activated by an event.
Information is the set of data filtered by the human within
the bounds of the knowledge held by that human (or
group of humans); it establishes a link between cognition
and data.
Boisot (1998)
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3 classes of Media effect….
Agenda setting –
the ability of the media to define the significant issues
of the day.
Priming –
the relationship between patterns of news coverage
and the criteria with which the public evaluated
politicians and celebrities.
Framing –
the connection between qualitative features of the news
and public opinion.
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Controlling infosphere….
IW in the Information Age is about controlling the
‘infosphere’. It includes perceptions and information
flows at the tactical, operational and strategic level in
times of peace, tension, and war. As such, it means
controlling sources and the dissemination of
information.
Controlling perceptions held by those in the
infosphere implies that information must be created
that favors the dominant party. As such, that
information may or may not represent physical
reality.
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Now?…
Librarians have long been took responsibility for the reliability of
information and protected their users from the consequences caused
by inaccurate information.
The problem is one of verifiability, the users may not have a way to
verify whether information is accurate or inaccurate. The
verification is even more difficult with disinformation.