Attention war - Digital Threat Digest
PGI’s Digital Investigations Team brings you the Digital Threat Digest, SOCMINT and OSINT insights into disinformation, influence operations, and online harms.
PGI’s Digital Investigations Team brings you the Digital Threat Digest, SOCMINT and OSINT insights into disinformation, influence operations, and online harms.
On Sunday, I came across an article in the Financial Times discussing the impact of the Israel-Palestine conflict on the war in Ukraine. It stated: "Ukrainians are now wondering if the world has the attention span and courage to focus on two major wars." This isn't an unfair assumption — in the last two weeks, my social media feeds have been flooded with content focused on Israel and Palestine. Such is the oversaturation of the information environment that I haven't seen much discourse on Ukraine or any other conflict-ridden countries (take Sudan, for example, on which we have written about in previous digests). Many argue that this shift in focus towards Israel and Palestine is a case of selective empathy; however, like the FT article, I'm more inclined to believe that it instead stems from a growing global attention deficit — a phenomenon that brings its own set of digital vulnerabilities to the table.
Research has found that an information overload (both in production and consumption, as seen with Israel and Palestine) leads to a greater collective attention deficit. This, in turn, makes people uniquely vulnerable to disinformation online. It's the classic 'less is more' theory; the more choice we have, the less patient we are and the less patient we are, the more we give in to bite-sized, neatly packaged, and often unverified content. In short, we don’t spend our time doing the required due diligence.
At the moment, social media is oversaturated with content relating to Israel and Palestine, most of which is false or misleading. For example, users on X (formerly Twitter) were made to believe that a video game simulation was footage of a Hamas attack; that fireworks in Algeria were Israeli air strikes; and that a 2012 attack on a local police station in Bahrain was an ongoing attack against the Israeli embassy — and there are countless other examples. The current information overload fuels impatience; it draws users to the ‘prettiest’ infographics or most sensationalist videos that reinforce their confirmation biases, while reliable content gets buried under the noise. This is then exacerbated by existing echo chambers on social media platforms, which push partisan opinions and favour users that have bought legitimacy, regardless of the veracity of the information they disseminate.
It is my (perhaps cynical) belief that threat actors are aware of the implications (and opportunities) of flooding the information environment. They exploit users’ diminishing attention spans to push disinformation, hate speech and outright incitement to violence into the mainstream — a tactic that works to sow discord 9 times out of 10. It is therefore increasingly important for us to not only do our due diligence and verify shared content, but also be cognisant of the fact that our attention is unknowingly declining; making us more vulnerable to digital threats.
More about Protection Group International's Digital Investigations
Our Digital Investigations Analysts combine modern exploitative technology with deep human analytical expertise that covers the social media platforms themselves and the behaviours and the intents of those who use them. Our experienced analyst team have a deep understanding of how various threat groups use social media and follow a three-pronged approach focused on content, behaviour and infrastructure to assess and substantiate threat landscapes.
Disclaimer: Protection Group International does not endorse any of the linked content.
In the mid-20th century, Gilbert Ryle threw sand in the eye of Cartesian dualism, calling the idea of a separate mind a 'category mistake' and dubbing it the 'ghost in the machine'—essentially suggesting that Descartes had outed himself as harbouring an imaginary friend.
Everything that I have learned about the US elections this year has been against my will. Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that whoever controls the White House has significant impact around the world, and I will admit that keeping up with American politics makes me a better analyst.
Digital threat intelligence helps us respond to harmful entities and their activities online. As our professional investigation capability evolves, so do the online tactics of threat actors themselves, in something of a perpetual cat and mouse game.