Identity, Stability, hybrid threats and disinformation

Remy Maduit | Authors published

Identity, Stability, Hybrid Threats, and Disinformation

Jane Freedman is a Professor at Université Paris 8, Paris, France.
Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv is a Professor of Critical Studies on Peace and Conflict at The Arctic University of Norway, Norway.
Velomahanina Razakamaharavo is a Visiting Fellow at Technical University Munich, Germany.

 

Current analyses of hybrid threats pay very little attention to gender or the intersection of different identity markers as an element of analysis. [1] This is typical of more traditional approaches to threats and warfare that are state-centric and show less awareness of the role of the civilian domain in the dynamics of conflict. Understanding hybrid threats and warfare, however, reveals the complex spectrum of conflict that recognize multiple approaches (beyond the military) to create destabilization, insecurity, and eventually violent conflict. More recent research on hybrid threats explores the roles of civilians in the hybrid threat and conflict spectrum, and how non-military tools are employed to disrupt and destabilize the civilian environment, having broader implications for local, regional, and national security. [2] To better understand how civilians are actors and targets in hybrid warfare scenarios, it is crucial to understand the civilian domain itself, and where its potential vulnerabilities lie. We often connect these vulnerabilities to identity markers that intersect in various social contexts, from gender and class to race, ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation. These markers are integrally linked to societal social norms, roles, and beliefs that are crucial to what civilians consider fundamental to the survival of their physical or social selves. To their societal and national survival and security.

We argue that including an intersectional analysis is thus relevant to identifying vulnerabilities in society but is also instrumental to understanding the possibilities for societal resilience–the ability of society to resist or respond to hybrid threats. Gender and other intersecting identity markers are important both in understanding the risks posed by hybrid threats, their potentially different impacts on men and women (often combined with other identity markers such as race/ethnicity or sexual orientation, for example), and how resilience can be strengthened. This paper will review how we understand hybrid threats and the role civilians play in the transmission of such threats and then propose an overview of how gender and intersectional analysis can be better used in the analysis of hybrid threats, using examples from recent incidents in Europe, to strengthen understanding and provide more comprehensive recommendations for building resilience.

Before analyzing how gender is important in hybrid threats and resilience, it is important to define exactly what we understand by hybrid threats and resilience. The term hybrid threat of hybrid warfare has been criticized for lack of analytical clarity, and it can encompass a wide variety of distinct elements.

Method

In this paper, we apply a concept-oriented approach to case examples to show how gender and intersectionality are important in our understanding of how hybrid threats operate in the civilian domain. Explain what we mean by gender and intersectionality, lenses through which we argue we can better understand the strengths and vulnerabilities of the civilian domain in hybrid threats and warfare. We then present the core concepts we will work with, both defining these concepts but initially flagging gender and intersectionality as we do so. We focus on the concepts of hybrid threats, resilience, disinformation, and civilian agency, and thereafter engage these concepts in the Development section about the destabilization of societies, and the potential of resilience informed by gender perspectives.

1. Gender, intersectionality, and the complexity of the civilian environment

Discussions about how we understand gender continue to develop. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was increasingly clear that a lot of the work addressing gender inequalities — about inequalities between men and women — excluded certain, marginalized, segments of the female population, namely women of color and/or of non-European ethnicities. It became increasingly recognized that it was not enough to speak about “women” because even between women, many inequalities existed based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, and other identity markers. Thus the term “Intersectionality” was introduced to consider the complexity of inequalities and power relations between not just binary and simplistic, categories of “men” and “women”, but between different classes of white women (affluent or middle class, or working-class or poor), or between white and black or brown women, women of European heritage (often characterized as “white” and “Christian”) and women of color and/or outside of the Christian tradition (including indigenous women), which could be even further complicated by class, sexual orientation, or other marginalized identities.

Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s, they designed the term intersectionality to critically assess the intersection between race, gender, class, and other identity categories that have been regularly produced and reproduced within different contexts. [3] The intersectional analysis makes visible how identity has been produced and used to expand, reinforce, or reduce power. As noted by Mohanty, “focusing on the identities and perspectives of the marginalized can produce a deeper knowledge of objective social structures and their effects… [Theories] elaborated through such concepts as “intersectionality” and “epistemic privilege”–are based on a non-positivist conception of objective social knowledge”. [4] In an interview, Crenshaw noted [5] that this approach has been subjected to a backlash, being accused of creating “identity politics,” and is itself responsible for fragmenting societies along identity lines, creating mistrust and distrust between people. Such accusations reflect what we will continue to examine below: systems of trust have often relied upon and studied through the normalization of an assumed “identity-free” universal man. [6] When challenged, however, the universal man is exposed as reflecting the identities of those with power in a society (e.g.: affluent, white, male, able, heterosexual). [7] Those not reflecting these normalized identities become threats to that system of trust. Indeed, for that system to survive, distrust of the other (identity) is imperative. [8] As agents of security, states can try to build or maintain institutional trust through particularised distrust-building towards the racialized, gendered, classed “other”.

The dynamics behind hybrid threats (discussed below) demonstrate the complexities of the various ways gender and other identity markers can be defined and manipulated to serve specific purposes. Gender is a relational concept whose construction varies across geographical space and time. The impacts of gender constructions are to be understood by other socially constructed categorizations and hierarchies of power, such as race and class. The conceptualization and definition of gender are highly fluid and dynamic depending on the intervening events and actors taking part in the construction process. Gender categorizations can be manipulated and refashioned in discourses, instrumentalized in politics, or reconstructed by individuals and communities to target social vulnerabilities. Hybrid threats, such as the examples that follow in this article, show the extent to which gender is complex and intersects with other identities. In situations involving threats that focus on the identities of (usually) marginalized or non-dominant identities [9], the identity of the other is constructed by the self as abnormal, not fitting into the dominant group, different, not trustworthy, a threat and thus he/she/ they must be punished, sent to jail or back to his/her/ their homeland(s), etc. These constructions of the other as a threat are based on the manipulation of social norms that there are “normal” or “traditional” gender norms and behaviors that these “others” threaten. A typical example [10] is a backlash against a perceived undermining of “natural” masculine dominance by feminists who call for gender equality. Societal vulnerabilities, and particularly those associated with polarization and misunderstanding of gender issues, can be exploited through hostile campaigns employing digital communication. For example, online, with micro-targeting and social engineering, it is very easy for malevolent actors to target a massive number of civilians on social media and in video games using Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) diffusing messages making use of fabricated/ imagined/ constructed “identities” that are further labeled as a threat and engaging in vile, malevolent, and criminal acts. Such malevolent actors use specific tropes or stereotypes exploiting identities/differences/ inequalities that are present as existing social cleavages. If the disinformation begins with a focus on gendered discourses, the public can easily shape, refashion, and extend the disinformation so that other identities are targeted, enacting civilian agency. Communities that are sympathetic to the messaging of the original disinformation often rely on the particularized trust that reverberates and grows within social echo chambers (often on social media), thus strengthening their perceptions of their selves (the pure, the natives, the high people, the victims of threats, the innocent white young women, etc.) and sustaining divisions, othering, discrimination, the exercise of one’s power and dominance over the other. [11]

Using this framework helps us to understand how political cleavages or vulnerabilities operate, and further how they are targeted through hybrid attacks.

2. Hybrid threats and warfare

There continue to be debate around the definitions of hybrid warfare, hybrid threats, and a related concept of “gray zone” conflicts. There is additionally an overlap or conflation with other concepts such as remote warfare, asymmetric warfare, new wars, sixth-generation/ contactless/ next-generation/ ambiguous/ asymmetrical/nonlinear warfare, and full-spectrum conflict, among others. [12]

Earlier conceptions of hybrid warfare maintained a kinetic or lethal component defining it as:

“Threats that incorporate a full range of different modes of warfare including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder, conducted by both sides and a variety of non-state actors.” [13]

As noted by James Wither [14], this type of “hybrid” warfare is distinct from historical forms of warfare because of the mixing of methods–that is, conventional and irregular. However, the increased use of information warfare and targeting of public opinion became another distinguishing feature by 2014, as articulated by then NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in his characterization of Russian tactics in Ukraine, focusing in part on what he called the Russian “aggressive program of disinformation”. [15] In time, non-military methods of hybrid warfare, especially disinformation campaigns and other approaches to destabilize societies (such as cyber-attacks on infrastructure) have become key features of hybrid warfare and threats.

The notion of “grey zone” conflicts has been increasingly used, referring to the blurring of the previously perceived lines between peace and war, where the latter manifested itself through the obvious use of overt violence, often by state actors/militaries. The grey zone speaks to those measures that create destabilization and conflict below those thresholds we traditionally associate with war, the overt use of violence. Frank Hoffman distinguishes between hybrid warfare and grey zone conflicts whereby the latter is defined as “[t]hose covert or illegal activities of non-traditional statecraft that are below the threshold of armed, organized violence… as a part of an integrated design to achieve strategic advantage”, which include disruptive tactics such as influence operations, disinformation, psychological operations, destabilizing legal processes. [16] This is contrasted with hybrid warfare, which pertains more so to the “fused mix” of conventional weapons, terrorism, crime, and other forms of violence to “obtain desired political objectives”. [17] Hybrid warfare is not necessarily under the threshold and includes the use of violence. Hoffman notes NATO employs a definition that is broader in scope, “depicting [hybrid warfare] like a mixture of military means with non-military tools including propaganda and cyber activity”, which is closer to Hoffman’s definition of grey zone conflict.

A considerable amount of research on hybrid threats and warfare focuses on state actors as perpetrators, as well as primary targets–addressing Russian tactics in the Baltic states, especially Ukraine [18], the role of China [19], or the roles of NATO, the EU [20], and the US. [21] Recent definitions of hybrid threats and warfare note that these strategies are dominantly employed by authoritarian states against democratic states [22], even though the US has been accused of conducting hybrid activities against Russia and Iran, for example. [23] Non-state actors also present as aggressors, including groups classified as terrorists [24], especially ISIS. [25] Both the state-centric and terrorist-oriented focus explain what can be perceived as the significant amount of scholarship on hybrid threats/ warfare using mostly realist frameworks. [26] They use the state as a security referent, downplaying or ignoring the roles of other actors such as civilians, and the role ordinary people play in the ways conflict develops. The result has been that less consideration has been put into the importance of civilians (with the exceptions of a few scholars, such as along with the implications of gender and other intersectional identity markers in the resulting security dynamics). [27]

In an EU Commission, Joint Research Center (JRC) Technical Report, the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) highlights the use of the term “hybrid threat” as an umbrella concept, and notes that in particular it “raises systemic vulnerabilities of democratic systems as particular targets”. [28] The report, therefore, focuses on hostile actors that target vulnerabilities in democratic states, using tactics associated with authoritarian or rogue states and non-state networks. They use the “multiple synchronized tools (in principle non-military)”, create ambiguity (hiding intent and attribution), and often include a distraction element. [29] To understand hybrid threats, one needs to understand the actors, tools, domains that are targeted, and the phases of attack. [30] Hybrid warfare falls within this spectrum of activity as the “hard end” of hybrid threat activity. [31] This approach resembles therefore a mix of the hybrid warfare and gray zone conflict approaches outlined above, though hybrid threats are the rough equivalent of grey zone conflict (and under the threshold, or before the exercise of overt violence), and hybrid warfare is distinctly separate resembling Hoffman’s definition of hybrid warfare and the employment of violence and/or traditional military measures. Julian Lindley-French, who has written extensively on NATO, draws on the concept of “maskirovka” (military deception) employed by Soviet forces in WWII. Lindley-French defines maskirovka as “war that is short of war, a purposeful strategy of deception that combines the use of force with disinformation and destabilization to create an ambiguity in the minds of Alliance leaders about how best to respond”. [32] For our article, we focus in particular on the under-threshold (grey zone) activities, as these are in particular relevant to the targeting, manipulation, and cooperation within the civilian domain. Perhaps better preparation to meet hybrid threats/ grey zone conflicts will mitigate the necessity of employing violent means in an escalated hybrid warfare scenario.

Though there is no clear agreement on a definition [33], we can characterize features: 1. Employs a combination of multiple means, including military, political, economic, legal, cultural, social, infrastructure, cyber, and information domains; 2. A hostile actor aims to avoid detection and tries to diffuse/confuse situational awareness; 3. A hostile actor can be stated, as a non-state or proxy actors (or all of them); 4. It tries to create a situation where existing societal differences and grievances are exacerbated. Non-military means, both cyber-attacks (on infrastructure, for example) or disinformation campaigns, especially done in the civilian domain.

3. Resilience

The impact and breadth of hybrid threats provide a lot of insight into how people, communities, and nations handle a crisis or conflict. It tests the resilience of society and illustrates the degree to which a non-military threat can destabilize societies. Article 3 of the NATO Treaty addresses resilience, expecting each member state resists armed attacks based on “their individual and collective capacity.” Resilience is understood as “a society’s ability to resist and recover easily and quickly from such shocks and combines both civil preparedness and military capacity”. [34]

Much of a society’s resilience lies in its population and people’s abilities to respond to a crisis, and perhaps people’s abilities to adapt to abrupt and potentially long-lasting change.

Resilience reflects an ability to “bounce back” and tackle a crisis and/or threat, but also an ability to develop or adapt. Assumptions about resilience are clear in narratives about “returning to normal” after the coronavirus crisis. Such assumptions do not consider how changes themselves may become normalized over time, and how attitudes and behaviors–not least amongst citizens – change. People expect governments to solve a crisis as soon as possible. But what if, like in the coronavirus crisis, that is not possible? Resilience in society may demand adjustments to the “new” normal, including new perceptions of insecurity.

4. Disinformation

Disinformation has attracted significant interest from various disciplines (media and communication, political science, psychology, science and technology studies, etc.). Some scholars work on the motives and intents behind the mechanisms or tools used to spread the information. Little is still known, however, about the role of the targets of disinformation—civilians—and their reactions to disinformation, and the subsequent effects of these on security dynamics in various contexts. Disinformation is a contested concept, very often conflated with misinformation, which is wrong information but not combined with a political motive to mislead and exacerbate social vulnerabilities. [35] “Fake news”, fabricated/manipulated content, rumors, information pollution, “misinformation”, information disorder, junk news, propaganda, and others are usually conflated with disinformation. [36] Fake news is “information deliberately fabricated and published to deceive and mislead others into believing falsehoods or doubting verifiable facts,” 1 and is linked to disinformation, misinformation, and misinformation. [37] Fake news “is misleading, in much the same way that disinformation is misleading: it is ‘likely to create false beliefs”. Disinformation is defined as “information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person, social group, organization or country.” [38] It targets and exploits socio-cultural cleavages with the intention of “creating social tension, polarising society, instilling fear in the population or undermining their trust in government”. [39] In elections, they employ fake news and other disinformation strategies to cause confusion and harm, including using myths, rumors, and superstitions. [40] Very often, civilians are not aware the information they share is “fake news” and fabricated to harm (to foment doubt and mistrust). Importantly, the spreading of misinformation or disinformation does not happen in a vacuum. Attempts to influence a society start with targeting existing vulnerabilities, and indeed, some sources of mis- and disinformation may not even try to disguise or hide, as certain citizens may already be inclined to trust such sources and spread them willingly to promote a political agenda they support. Mis- and disinformation attacks may only require small-scale or lightweight influence operations through selected media sites, which may be well-known and even popular. We need to be cognizant that mis- and disinformation can, as a result, be hidden in plain sight.

The rapid technological evolution accompanying advances in disinformation makes it important to better understand it. The literature has examined the roles of various technologies in disinformation including bots, (software applications running automated tasks (scripts)), botnets (Internet-connected devices, each running one or more bots), and AI, and the platforms they target such as social media like Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook. AI enhances the capability of other technologies (e.g. social media) and is generally understood as a technology, or an artificial system, imitating humans or reproducing human cognition using a large training dataset. There are many types of AI techniques (and applications): Artificial Neural Networks (ANN, e.g.: voice recognition), Generative Adversarial Learning (GAN, e.g.: generating photographs of human faces), and Natural Language Processing (NLP, e.g.: predictive texts). In information operations targeting elections, some AI techniques are associated with threats: for example, the use of machine learning to conduct user profiling and micro-targeting exploiting big data, or the manipulation of audio and visual materials using GAN for “deep fakes”. A significant knowledge gap, therefore, is understanding how those technologies interact, influence each other, and are used simultaneously, (and combined with offline practices, e.g. word-of-mouth) in disinformation, and the extent to which the information communicated with AI plays an important role in disinformation affecting civilians, (e.g.: memes, images, voice, and video deepfakes).

5. Civilian agency

Citizen actors engage in diverse strategies to ensure human security (physical and economic security primarily), ranging from cooperation with armed groups (state or non-state), selective sharing of information and resources, and the spread of dis/misinformation, to everyday forms of resistance. [41] A civilian agency is often framed as “resilience” but can include resistance (to other citizens, governments, and institutions), and includes multiple subjects of resilience that can be contradictory. The civilian agency includes all activities approaching (but not including) the use of violence if conflict drivers amongst citizens are excessively aggravated. [42] What then does citizen agency look like in different contexts? How has it affected the progression or regression of conflicts? Finally, how can understanding citizen agency better help move states and non-state actors out of conflict?

Citizen actions range from efforts to avoid physical violence, remain neutral, or be cooperative or collaborative. [43] Trust levels often influence these actions between civilians and authorities, as well as impact trust levels within their communities/societies. The concept of civilian agency politicizes civilian roles by acknowledging potential power at the individual level and using it towards either stability or instability. We know very little about the importance of ordinary people in those dynamics, especially in the context of hybrid threats. A civilian agency is integral to the assumptions hostile actors have about the potential to spread information – that people will spread it, and that they will be a party to potential destabilization tactics, either unknowingly or unwillingly, or in fact, as sympathizers to the political agenda that the spread of such information could promote.

Development

1. Targeting civilians, reducing trust, and increasing destabilization

A primary concern resulting from waning trust in government institutions is the potential for increased societal instability. A complex, hybrid form of challenges or threats that affect or target will dominate potential future crises in European populations, creating instability. [44] Citizen trust, loyalties, values, and politics are central to understanding these challenges of stability. Sustainable and legitimate governance relies upon trust between government institutions and their citizens, and a sustainable government is weakened if trust is weak. Destabilization – of states, governance structures, and societal relations – provides a crucial lens through which the effects of trust can be analyzed and measured, and helps us reappraise definitions and approaches to trust, including which levels are conducive to stable, sustainable, and fair social relations and thriving citizens. It is also a lens through which we can analyze how waning trust influences governance.

Political stability pertains to the maintenance of expectations around the flow of political exchanges. [45] Exchanges are political where they affect or try to affect, “the distribution of power to decide for that society”. [46] Laws and political roles contribute to the political structure in which such exchanges take place. Instability takes place when the political structure is challenged, either by contesting roles or defying the law (for example). These challenge the authority of the political structure. The degree to which a political structure can withstand such challenges, the more resilient the structure is. Destabilizing actions can arise in the face of existing vulnerabilities–erupting from economic difficulties such as job losses, the spread of misleading and/or false information, fears of migration, increasing threats and consequences because of climate change, and so forth. Destabilization has been directly linked to decreased trust in government institutions. [47] Destabilization results from purposeful action by those who wish to affect the distribution of power in a society.–the question is often whether these actions are internally driven or external. Often, it is a combination of both, whereby internally driven vulnerabilities become manipulated by external actors.

Destabilization can occur because of a combination of forces to change the efficacy/power of the political structures/system in a society and state. The system itself may already create vulnerabilities if it is considered illegitimate by the people it should rule—bottom-up actions by some citizens to disturb and disrupt the political structure if it is seen as not representative of certain ideologies or politics, may occur—including protests (that can turn violent–i.e.: yellow vests), media campaigns (influence information), the use of violence (terrorism), etc. Today, there is an increasing awareness that the vulnerabilities of certain political systems, whereby legitimacy is already contested on one or more fronts, are further being manipulated by outside sources (state and non-state) to create even more instability. The concept of stability has experienced an awkward relationship with democracy. Moves towards more stability—through top-down governance measures—may hinder democracy rather than promote or support it. We consider democracies to be significantly vulnerable to both internal and external disruptions and they are prone to vulnerabilities of legitimacy. As comparatively less rigid and dominant as authoritarian systems that engage the use of force more readily to quell uprisings or discontent, democracies are more easily vulnerable to unrest, both that which arises from within, but also that which is manipulated by external forces. It has been argued that democracies are better placed “to signal intentions and credibly to commit to courses of action in foreign policy than non-democracies” because of the role of “audience costs” and the ability of citizens to articulate their support or rejection of governance institutions. [48]

The resilience of society heavily depends on the trust in its citizens endow upon its institutions and governance approaches. The EU and NATO have recently adopted the concept of resilience as a response to destabilization. In the EU context, resilience has been frequently associated with foreign and humanitarian aid initiatives. Resilience can be defined as “the ability of an individual, a household, a community, a country or region to withstand, cope, adapt, and quickly recover from stresses and shocks such as violence, conflict, drought, and other natural disasters without compromising long-term development.” [49] The concept has increased its relevance to internal and “near neighbor” contexts whereby resilience becomes “the ability to absorb, adapt and recover from shocks through several initiatives within the EU itself, as well as through resilience-building measures in regions next to the EU–namely through democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.” [50]

In policy and scholarly literature, the focus on destabilization has been on institutional responses, whereby the EU and partners (e.g.: NATO) work towards strengthening the responsiveness and preparedness of institutions and infrastructure so that they are less vulnerable to disruption and instability. Whether destabilizing actions are internally or externally generated, the response largely relies on a central “solution”, the resilience of societies and their institutions and infrastructures. The focus has been very top-down, where institutions are strengthened, and these strengths are passed along to citizens as advice and guidance when confronted with crisis and instability. Far less, however, has been done to examine the role of civil society and citizens themselves, and how they can affect the potential “resilience” of institutions and infrastructures. Citizen action, inaction, or resistance needs to be assessed as well, as they are a part of the social network that is expected to handle and overcome crises and instability. In this respect, therefore, trust is a crucial element in the role of citizen and/or civil society resilience.

A significant gap exists between institutional preparation and governance, and awareness of citizen agency, as resilience has focused on a top-down, institutional approach, strengthening primarily institutional structures against instability (EU, NATO, individual states). They cannot integrate insights into “security as resilience” understood as a bottom-up, citizen-oriented perspective (human security) through citizen agency. [51] As well, citizen agency as resilience and trust are inadequately understood. Local behavioral patterns in this context are often subtle and relatively passive, and thus risk being overlooked by institutional approaches. [52] The resilience practices of citizens may also be contradictory to institutional resilience strategies and expectations of trust.

2. Looking at gender and intersecting identities: how are they relevant for thinking about hybrid threats?

As they combine the simultaneous employment of military and non-military tools, primarily targeting societies at large, military means can not counter hybrid threats solely. In fact, below the threshold (non-state violence), grey zone threats require an equally, if not more substantial, and inclusive response from the civilian domain and strengthening of social trust and resilience among citizens. Gender and other identity marker divisions and hierarchies are a feature of all societies, so to provide an inclusive response we need to think about gender and the intersectional ways in which women and men coming from dominant or marginalized communities might be targeted or actors in hybrid threats.

Gender is one of the most central identity markers and lenses for understanding the civilian environment. So, any analysis of the civilian environment and the way it is targeted or how resilience can be built needs to include, at a minimum, a gender analysis. To go further, and as we have already discussed, civilians as a group are divided not only by differences in gender but also by race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, and sexual orientation. These differences, both in self-identification and imposed categorization, impact the position and power of individuals and how they may be actors, both in creating hybrid threats and in reacting to them and resisting them.

However, whilst civilians comprise and include all genders, gendered constructions of civilian society have traditionally reduced civilians to be gendered as “female”. The gendered approach to civilians during warfare, where women are seen as “innocent”, “inactive” and “to be protected” has been projected onto the notion of “civilian” as a whole so that a gendered opposition is built between (simplistically) men and women. Within this dichotomy, men are actors of warfare who should protect the “vulnerable” women and children in the civilian population. Whilst hybrid threats differ from “classic” warfare, and threaten civilian populations in many diffuse ways, this gendered dichotomy persists. This problematizes the extent to which we can examine “civilians” as actors in crisis and war and points to the need to deconstruct dominant understandings and representations of “civilians”, and to analyze more closely the hierarchies and differences within civilian populations.

This is relevant when looking at men and women as actors in hybrid warfare. How do these men and women engage in hybrid warfare and pose hybrid threats? One tool of hybrid threat is that of dis-/mis-information, often spread through social media. Gender is important in understanding both the originators and the receivers of disinformation. It is well known that social media feeds and internet search results are constructed to show users results that cohere with what they already believe (for example, by creating user profiles based on what a person has “liked” on their Facebook account). The resulting “filter bubbles” or “echo chambers” mean that users receive information and news consistent with their existing beliefs and preferences, and fake news can thus match these beliefs and preferences. Further, these algorithms are exploited by companies such as Cambridge Analytica, which create profiles based on people’s gender, sexual orientation, and personality traits, among others. Women and men can thus be targeted with different fake news stories which are more likely to resonate with their gender identity. These processes will additionally target other identity markers when and where relevant, often simultaneously.

3. Exploiting Gendered Social Cleavages

Recent and highly polarized debates over social issues such as violence against women, immigration and integration of migrant communities, and the place of religion or secularism in European societies have provided fertile ground for the deployment of hybrid forms of threat that have sought to exacerbate and wide divisions based around these issues in society, and thus exploit vulnerabilities. As we noted earlier, disinformation does not always have to be hidden or is always impossible to attribute. Well-known websites or media sources can easily play a role in spreading disinformation, or at least, information that promotes polarized points of view and discord (towards destabilization) in a society. [53] Some Russian and pro-Russian social media sites and information sources have portrayed Western Europe and “European values” as a threat to their own “traditional” gender norms and regimes, through, for example, the promotion of homosexuality and the breakup of the “traditional” family. In Ukraine, Russian soft power initiatives appealed to conservative values and opinions regarding family life and sexuality to convince Ukrainians of the dangers of Europe and its promotion of “sexual deviance” and the abolition of traditional gender norms and roles: “Not by chance, Russian media tried to compromise the recent mass protests in Ukraine, which started under pro-European slogans, by reducing European values to sexual minorities. In Russian social media, Ukraine’s pro-European choice has been often discussed in sexual terms, as a sexual deviation and an abandonment of gender norms’. [54]

Within the EU, pro-Russian and anti-immigration social media sites have to exploit long-standing disputes such as that over Muslims wearing the hijab in public spaces. The banning of hijab in public spaces or public employment in several European states has already led to public division, and this issue is thus one that has lent itself to manipulation. In highly gendered messages, Muslim women who wear a hijab are often depicted as oppressed or backward – victims of patriarchal cultures -, and as pawns used to encourage the Islamization of European society. In France, for example, where this debate has been ongoing for decades, following the passing of legislation to ban the wearing of hijab in public schools in 2004, the theme is recurrent in far-right and anti-immigrant messaging. Recently, this issue has recurred frequently in public debate and has been exploited by far-right and anti-immigrant movements through various social media channels. [55] In 2016, a significant online polemic was created following the decision of the mayor of Cannes to ban women from wearing a “burkini” on the city’s beaches, which was quickly overturned by the French Conseil d’État. However, this small legal quarrel was turned into a large-scale public debate through the online activity of a few far-right websites and social media accounts. In 2019, when the French sportswear store, Decathlon, started selling hijabs adapted for running, another huge social media storm broke out, accusing the store of wanting to “Islamize” France. [56]

The hijab provides easy fuel for the far-right to provoke huge public reactions and stoke divisions. As well as protesting against the “Islamization” of France, they use arguments related to the defense of women’s rights to protest against the hijab and thus aim to enroll sectors of the public that would not be favorable to more classic far-right arguments. The normalization of white supremacist theories and opinions in many countries, for example, can be explained by how some people are attracted to ideas that attribute superiority to their racial, gendered, or ethnic category over “others”.

Using these types of arguments to create social divisions has been magnified by the so-called “refugee crisis” in Europe since 2015. Relatively large numbers of refugees, many from Muslim-majority countries such as Syria, have proved to be a contentious issue for many European countries, and the use of the language of “crisis” by politicians and the media has contributed to making this an issue that can be used by actors wishing to create or exacerbate social divisions within EU societies. The securitization of migration has been built around representations of migrants as a threat to Europe, and in particular as responsible for violence and crime, and migration has been seized as an opportunity for those wishing to disrupt European unity and undermine European citizens’ confidence in political leaders and institutions. [57] These threats have often focused on gendered issues, but also simultaneously race and ethnicity, and have employed particular representations and stereotypes of men and women to gain momentum. The threat of “Muslim” or “migrant” men to “European” women has, for example, become a key theme in this type of the influence. Migrant men are frequently depicted as predatory and sexually aggressive, posing a particular threat to European women. Some argue the countries and cultures from which they come do not respect women’s rights and have very low levels of gender equality, and thus the men from these countries do not understand “European values” of gender equality or respect for women’s rights. Thus, for example, Sweden has been labeled the “rape capital” of Europe by websites that link the high per capita number of refugees in the country to an alleged high risk of rape for Swedish women. [58] A series of websites linked to Russia and Hungary have published stories citing statistics from the Swedish National Crime Prevention Council to support their claims of massive increases in rape and sexual assault, which these sites link to many refugees in Sweden. However, the statistics are used out of context, failing to note how legal amendments in the definition of sexual assault and changes in methods for recording these in public data change figures on these crimes. [59]

The widespread reporting of the sexual assaults supposedly carried out by “migrant” men in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015 is a well-known example of how this threat by male migrants to European women has been perpetuated. When some women reported they had been sexually assaulted during the New Year’s Eve celebrations in the city, there were quickly widespread media and social media reports claiming that these attacks had been coordinated by migrant and refugee men, although there was no accurate proof or reporting of this. The Cologne case sparked further reports of other similar attacks. They forced Bild newspaper to apologize in February 2017 after it published a report that a “mob” of migrant men had assaulted women in Frankfurt. [60] In a report published on 6 February 2017, Bild, “quoted Jan Mai, the owner of a cafe in Frankfurt, as saying that 50 “Arab-looking men” had assaulted women on 31 December 2016. It also quoted a woman it identified only as Irina A., 27, who said she had been among those who were groped “everywhere” by the men”. [61] However, the police affirmed that there was no evidence that this crime had taken place, and they forced the newspaper to apologize for publishing a false story. In 2016, the “Lisa” case swept to the forefront of German news. Russian TV and media reported widely on the case of a thirteen-year-old Russian-German girl who had gone missing in Germany, and who had supposedly been kidnapped, beaten, and raped by three migrants of Arab origin. [62] The information was quickly spread through social media and the internet and led to the organization of demonstrations by extreme-Right groups in Germany. [63] The claims that Lisa had been kidnapped were quickly shown to be false—she had been staying with a friend—but the rumors and false information persisted. The German police, Lisa, and her family publicly denied the story, but the Russian-backed media that had featured the report did not issue an apology. They continued to frame the story as showing that Germany had a problem with policing and controlling migrants who were carrying out acts of sexual violence against women and girls. [64] Even in 2018, Russian media sources continued to propagate the idea that the “Lisa case” was not fake because German courts have imposed no punishment on Russian media sources for diffusing false information. [65]

Using gendered representations of migrant threats to create social divisions also has implications for how white men are represented as being under threat from feminists, migrants, and all those who are supporting gender equality or migrant rights. Using traditional gender roles is a major factor in how men and women belonging to alt-right movements choose to portray themselves on social media and to influence others. The alt-right has been described as containing unifying themes that prioritize a fear of difference, whether that difference is sexual, gendered, religious, or racial. A cult of masculinity manifests itself in an “obsession with sexual politics and the hetero-normative gender roles embodied in the nuclear family”. [66]

Membership in alt-right groups is predominantly male. Bergman [67] conducted a comprehensive analysis of rank-and-file supporters of the Alt-Right and argues that the movement promotes a sense of “male entitlement” which is “easily radicalized and connected to white nationalism and white supremacy”. [68] By attacking feminism and liberal notions of gender equality, the Alt-Right has “created a culture of vitriolic defensiveness among young white males, which aims to establish a common belief in white male victimhood”. [69] The Alt-Right’s existence, in part, relies upon a rejection of the accomplishments of feminism. [70] These messages are spread through social media sites and target white men to radicalize them and create resistance to government and existing social structures, ultimately resulting in acts of violence and conflict within societies: “Far-right movements exploit young men’s rebellion and dislike of, ‘political correctness’, to spread white supremacist thought, Islamophobia, and misogyny through irony and knowledge of internet culture. This is radicalization happening primarily through forums, message boards, and social media targeting young men immersed in internet culture”. [71]

Images of women (perceived as conventionally attractive/beautiful) have been stolen and used on fake social media accounts to target and attract men to these accounts. In particular, Russian-backed social media bots have stolen and employed images of “attractive” white women to attract white heterosexual men. For example, a former beauty queen, Rachel Hunter, was targeted in this way, when her image was stolen and used to front an alt-right Facebook account to attract men to the movement. One study on the activity of troll social networks linked to the war in Syria revealed that when experts published reports or articles that were critical of Russia or the Bashar El Assad regime, “they were instantly trolled by hundreds of fake accounts,” presenting themselves as attractive young women eager to talk politics with Americans, including some working in the national security sector”. [72] These accounts, which present themselves as belonging to attractive women, are termed “honeypot” accounts, aimed to lure men into following and engaging with them.

There are some women in the Alt-right movements who also reject “feminism” and adhere to ideas promoting women’s “complementary” role to that of men, like stay-at-home parents and mothers, reproducing “white” families. [73] Images and representations of “traditional” male roles and hyper-masculinity have also been used in Russia’s information warfare campaign in Ukraine. Research has shown how hyper-masculine images of Putin have been used to emphasize the strength of Russia, whilst they targeted Ukrainian leaders and their Western Europe supporters as feminized or homosexual to show their weakness and supposed decadence. [74] One report on a Russian “troll factory” pushing out social media posts to undermine Russian opponents described a bank of humiliating images of Western leaders, including one of the then Ukrainian president Poroshenko in drag declaring “We are preparing for European integration”. [75]

Conclusion

Looking at how men and women may engage in hybrid warfare differently and may be targeted in varying ways, also allows us to think about different levels and strategies of resilience and resistance which might be employed by men and women, amongst different dominant or marginalized identities groups. Researchers have previously made the argument that more gender-equal societies may be more peaceful and less likely to engage in war. We could also suppose that more gender-equal societies might be more resilient to the type of hybrid warfare, which involves weaponizing social divisions such as those discussed above to create civil conflict. If, as we have argued above, hybrid threats such as fake news or disinformation, and misinformation, seek to use existing inequalities and fault lines in societies and weaponized these to create increasing social conflict, more equal societies, have fewer disparities based on gender, race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and have more solidarity between citizens, are harder to destabilize in this way, and thus more resilient. Udupa and Pohjonen [76] propose an “extreme speech” framework which emphasizes the ethnographic sensibilities of certain cultural contexts which makes them more receptive to certain types of hate speech and disinformation. This framework focuses on systematic inquiries into histories of racial construction and hierarchies which can be weaponized to provoke social conflict. We suggest that the addition of a focus on constructions of gender norms and hierarchies could be added to provide an intersectional framework to understand how social resilience to disinformation can be reinforced.

Using intersectional approaches to analysis allows us to understand broader, complex regions that are increasingly targeted by hybrid threats. But more needs doing. Some research is being accumulated about democracies in the global north, but less is being done with a view of the global south, where more newly emerging democracies can be extremely vulnerable to influence operations, misinformation, and disinformation. There is a gap in the literature exploring various angles of hybrid threats and warfare in the global south, especially in Africa. The existing literature on African cases explores very little to what extent technologies affect institutions, crisis management, or norms (and vice versa).

Most of the scholarship revolves around social media and elections [77], digital dictatorship and democracy [78], separatism, hate speech [79], and its social effects. [80] Despite this lack of theorization, some studies are emerging, such as they attempt to understand, for example, motivations for sharing mis-/disinformation by comparing African countries. Such research is imperative both to understand the impacts of hybrid attacks on emerging democracies, but also for comparative benefits. Democracies in the global south may be “emerging”, but so is power from this region, with an increasingly well-connected and technology-savvy young population. With the global south, for example, there is no research exploring the implications of post-colonialism (including gendered norms) in hybrid warfare/threats. Gender and intersectional analyses of hybrid threat scenarios open up the doors to a better understanding of how hybrid threats function, across contexts, making use of identity markers from gender to race and ethnicity, from age to class, or sexual orientation. The literature (on security, disinformation, hybrid warfare, etc.) has not yet addressed the implications of the management of those crises and the dynamics of trust, security, and resilience at play. The roles structure of domination, oppression, inequality, etc. play in hybrid threat processes can no longer be ignored.

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.