Digital Influence Mercenaries: Profits and Power Through Information Warfare



https://CourseLala.com

English | April 15th, 2022 | ISBN: 1682477223 | 264 pages | True EPUB | 1.61 MB

In today's online attention economy, supply and demand have created a rapidly growing market for firms and entrepreneurs using the tactics, tools, and strategies of digital influence warfare to gain profit and power. This book focuses on the more malicious types of online activity such as deception, provocation, and a host of other dirty tricks conducted by these "digital influence mercenaries." They can be located anywhere with an Internet connection—Brazil, China, Iran, Macedonia, Russia, Zimbabe —and the targets of their influence efforts can be whomever and wherever they are paid to attack.

They can do this for state governments willing to pay and provide their targeting instructions (usually in support of foreign policy objectives) and may have specific metrics by which they will assess the mercenaries' performance. Non-state actors (including corporations and political parties) can pay for these kinds of digital influence services as well. And in addition to being paid for services rendered, digital influence mercenaries can also profit simply by manipulating the targeted advertising algorithms used by social media platforms.