Protecting Servicemembers from MDM

In the current social media environment, we are all regularly being exposed to foreign adversary efforts to influence and persuade us—including mis-/dis-/mal-information (MDM). The propagation of MDM and the efforts to influence US servicemembers are national security threats that can have deleterious effects on military readiness, order, and discipline.

Combating MDM is complex and requires a substantial and coordinated response. To aid such efforts, this research examines a set of evidence-based interventions that have been shown to successfully increase resilience to influence, persuasion, and MDM: inoculation, debunking and fact-checking, and media literacy. Specifically, it looks at factors relevant to designing a program for protecting servicemembers from malign foreign influence, offers best practices related to each intervention, and recommends a course of action for those designing programs to protect servicemembers. We completed this analysis as a follow-up effort to an earlier report that reviewed the literature on these interventions—including a brief history of each technique, a description of how each one works, and a summary of the state of research on each technique.

Importantly, this research is not designed to change people’s strongly held positions, or even people’s lightly held opinions. The goal is narrow and specific: help people sift the true from the false, and protect people from being manipulated by systems and actors aspiring to hack their brains.