Targeting Ontological Security: Information Warfare in the Modern Age

Abstract

Recent studies have made great strides looking at the implications that the human need for ontological security has for politics and International Relations. However, less attention has been paid to how actors might target this need. While Steele and Mattern both examine the possible manipulation of subjectivity, this article turns to the concept of information warfare (IW) to broaden the view of how, and to what end, this is pursued. Congruently, by elaborating upon how the digitalization of society has increased the potential to influence and manipulate cognition and emotion, OS strengthens current literature on IW. It argues that by covertly perverting the information landscape, IW can alter how events are connected to national narratives, influencing policy by making certain options appear more/less shameful, or it can unravel the bonds of society by polarizing domestic narrative debates, purposely sowing ontological insecurity. This provides a firmer understanding of the strategic implications interference can have generally and of Russia's interference into the 2016 U.S. election specifically. Therefore, by viewing facets of IW as part of a range of tactics employed to manipulate/ undermine subjectivity, a more nuanced understanding of interstate relations subsequently emerges.

Jewishness without Jews? Ontological Security, Ethnonationalism, and the Social Power of Analogical Reasoning in Postcolonial Nigeria

“…The last decade has witnessed the flourishing of ontological security theory in sociology, political science, and international relations. Indeed, the framework has been employed to address theoretical and empirical conundrums ranging from globalization and religious nationalism (Kinnvall 2004), national belonging and nationalist politics (Kinnvall 2018;Skey 2010), state personhood, security, and identity (Berenskoetter and Giegerich 2010;Krolikowski 2008), domestic policymaking (Lupovici 2012), memory politics and post-conflict reconciliation (Rumelili 2018;Subotić 2016), information warfare (Bolton 2021) to governmentality and ideology (Marlow 2002), social movements (Solomon 2018), state denial of historical crimes (Zarakol 2010), the European Union's Eastern Neighbourhood Policy (Browning 2018), state revisionism (Behravesh 2018), conflict resolution (Rumelili 2015), diaspora and transnational migration (Abramson 2019), human security (Shani 2017), great power narcissism (Hagström 2021), and humanitarian interventions (Steele 2008). Because of the diversity of conundrums that draw on the framework, some scholars -Steele (2019) amongst themadvocate that it should be regarded not so much as ontological security theory but as ontological security studies.…”

Affective Contexts Worldwide

“…Such media ecologies are exploitable by foreign actors seeking to wage information warfare, for instance, by encouraging dissent via targeted attacks that play on existing societal and cultural fissures. During the 2016 presidential election, the foreign military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU) fuelled disinformation, seeking to influence the very bonds of society (Bolton, 2021). Tactics included hacking-and-dumping campaigns, fake online personas on social media and disseminating propaganda (Howard et al, 2018;Jamieson, 2018;McFaul & Kass, 2019).…”

Ontological security, cyber technology, and states’ responses

“…Nonetheless, these studies on emotions and cyber have not linked these aspects to ontological security, and they focus on individuals’ emotions rather than on emotions at the societal level. Finally, a number of works have briefly mentioned that cyber technology connects with ontological security (Hansen and Nissenbaum, 2009: 1160; Stevens, 2016: 90) and others elaborate on more specific themes: self-image and the justification of surveillance (Ralston, 2014); collective memory and Wikipedia (Gustafsson, 2020); targeting an opponent’s ontological security needs and disinformation (Bolton, 2021a); (non-)traumas and the securitization of cyber-attacks (Whooley, 2021), and emotions and social networks (Kinnvall, 2019: 292; Solomon, 2018; Steele, 2019). These works provide useful points of departure for this research.…”