Bryant Watkins
4/16/23
Case Analysis on Information Warfare
PHIL 355E
The 2016 United States presidential election proved to be arguably the most contentious and consequential of our times. With the heavy presence and involvement of major social media empires like Facebook and Twitter, the 2016 election cycle was the most unique information dynamic ever given the lack of influence or complete nonexistence of social media in previous election cycles in the United States. In 2016’s U.S presidential election cycle, Facebook was introduced to possessing more power than ever in its ability to bare influence on America’s sacred electoral process given the great influx of social media and internet involvement in political advertising. This increased influential baring on the election gave way to arguably the most intense and complex information warfare in U.S political history, from the battle between Democrats and Republicans – to even the involvement of foreign adversaries such as Russia through the utilization of Facebook’s platform. In this Case Analysis I will argue that Virtue ethics show us that Facebook did engage in information warfare because of the extensive battle for informational superiority by Russia and the GOP over political opposition, and further that they were partly responsible for the election outcome because their allowance of disinformation, misinformation, and other nefarious information warfare tactics were not in line with the conduct of a virtuous person.
A major concept discussed within Prier’s piece, Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare, was certainly the concept of the weaponization of social media. The weaponization of social media is essentially the utilization of social media platforms, in this case Facebook specifically, to intentionally spread disinformation and misinformation as well as gain an overall informational advantage over the opposition. When discussing the weaponization of social media Prier specifically addresses the major role played in this process by a substantial component called propaganda. Propaganda is “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2022). Prier details how propaganda has been used to bare heavy influence over the public’s manner of thinking for years in the political realm, but not in the manner observed through the weaponization of Facebook during the United States’ 2016 presidential election cycle.
In using such a concept to analyze the case at hand, it is very apparent that bad actors in the GOP as well as Russia acted on nefarious intentions to effectively weaponize Facebook like never before in the pursuit of propaganda proliferation across the United States. As Prier mentioned – Facebook facilitated the desires of these bad actors to knowingly and willingly spread false and/or misleading information. Not only were the Russians and GOP members looking to spread disinformation propaganda – they did so in an extremely selective manner with near surgical precision. The precision in which they not only sought to disseminate fake news to specific individuals and demographics but also sought to omit other individuals from certain information was a clear attempt to create an information/propaganda bubble. The bubble that they desired to create would shield certain many citizens from any sort of information that others may be receiving heavy exposure to.
By allowing such false information to intentionally be spread amongst the American public Facebook conducted actions that I deem to be not virtuous. Virtue ethics in this case would likely see Facebook as being a sort of referee so to speak, Facebook should have absolutely taken action on the behalf of the world (given the global ramifications) to stem the intentional spread of misinformation as well as preventing the specificity in which certain Americans and demographics were targeted at the benefit of nefarious actors. While not all inaccurate information is intentional or even intentionally spread, a virtuous decision by Facebook would have been to uphold the morality of providing Americans with and maintaining a free and fair democratic election process for all involved. Also, given that Facebook was founded in America and headquartered here, it is especially non-virtuous to then allow a foreign nation let alone an extreme adversary such as Russia to be able to meddle and push false information in our American election system. Had Facebook conducted themselves in a virtuous manner, there is an incredibly strong argument that much of the disinformation that plagued our social media interactions would have been impeded and thus would not have bore as much influence over our sacred democratic process as it unfortunately did. Unlike other philosophies that deal with intentions and consequences of actions, Virtue ethics deals with positive character treats and the character traits shown by Facebook are certainly not of the virtuous nature needed to uphold and safeguard American democracy effectively.
A Second Amendment for Cyber? Possession, Prohibition and Personal Liberty for the Information Age by Keith Scott is an excellent piece that essentially provides a strong case for cyber weaponization being regulated like that of traditional physical weaponry. In his piece Scott discusses two key concepts very much applicable to the case at hand. The first concept he mentions is something called Fourth generation of warfare, a concept that assists our understandings of the dangers posed in the relationship between the internet, military, and political landscape. Scott goes on to describe this concept as, “the tactics used by non-state actors (and/or non-state proxy forces for hostile states) seeking to destabilize and disrupt through the techniques of terrorism, guerilla and Informational warfare” (2018). In the case of Fourth generation warfare the supposed “enemy” is nearly impossible to combat due to their refusal to engage in direct combat as well as disappearing once the attack has been launched (Scott, 2018). The second major concept discussed by Scott was something known as Open Source Warfare. Scott defines Open Source Warfare as, “a large number of small groups, often holding divergent essential principles, who … ‘have subordinated their individual goals to the common goal of the movement’” (Scott & Robb, 2018 & 2005).
The concepts outlined in Scott’s piece certainly are accurate depictions of precisely what took place in this case involving Facebook’s role in the 2016 United States presidential election cycle. In this case, actors such as Steve Bannon & Breitbart as well as Russia would assuredly appear play the role of “non-state actors” and “proxy forces for a hostile state”. Actors such as Steve Bannon and Russia took part in separate campaigns utilizing Facebook to conduct Informational warfare against the Democratic party as well as American democracy, thus aligning with the description of Fourth generation warfare outlined by Scott. The second concept of Open Source Warfare also provides for sufficient applicability with Facebook’s case. Scott outlines the very three actors involved in the weaponization of online social media in order to advance their aims. In this case the three actors were three insurgencies that, disrupted the 2016 republican party leading to victory, further displaced the party in minority in Democrats, and then provided over the distribution and regulation of information in the United States. All of these insurgent actors worked towards the common goal of achieving far right domination of the American political landscape and society.
In using Virtue ethics to assess the actions taken in this case as understood through my analysis, I assess the role and actions of Facebook as being not of virtuous person. Facebook completely stood by and allowed an unfair takeover essentially of America socially and informationally by a far-right fringe that is in the minority in reality. By allowing such a takeover, Facebook participated in the silencing and deliberate distortion of the voices of many law abiding ordinary American voters and citizens. If Facebook were to conduct themselves in the manner of a virtuous actor, then they would have ensured that there was equal access and distribution of factual information as well as the systematic omission of disinformation distribution that merely seeks to sow confusion and nefarious influence of the vulnerable. Honesty, integrity, and fairness are all integral to makeup of the character of one that is virtuous. Facebook was wrong for its role in the mass disinformation campaign of the 2016 United States presidential election. Some may very well make the case for this scenario being a discussion about intentions and consequences behind actions as seen with some other ethical philosophies. While I find that those reasonings are very much credible, I do not find this case here to be about intentions or consequences as opposed to the virtuous/non-virtuous character of the actions here. Being on the sidelines and thus indirectly involved with such an important role, the actions that one takes or in this case does not take certainly appears to me to be a more rational question of personal character. Your personal characteristics should be front and center of the ethical thinking and decision-making in this case on the behalf of those operating over the enormous social media empire and news distributor that is in Facebook.