INTERNETIN RIHMASTOLLISET VUOROVAIKUTUSMEKANISMIT

Kirjoittajat

• Miika Sartonen Maanpuolustuskorkeakoulu
• Aki-Mauri Huhtinen Maanpuolustuskorkeakoulu

Avainsanat:

PSYOPS, psykologiset operaatiot, vaikuttaminen, kyber, internet

Abstrakti

The internet has brought us many benefits that have helped it grow global and touch in some way almost every citizen on this planet. Today, shopping online or visiting a virtual bank no longer is something extraordinary, reserved only for the digitally agile. These everyday events are the easily observable part of the transition towards a digital society. The more revolution-ary and less visible part, however, may be the way the internet shapes our behaviour and means of interaction. Understanding these changes from a military perspective is the main objective of the dissertation being written by Sartonen. From a military perspective, typically influence efforts fall under the umbrella of psychological operations, targeting a specific target audience. As everything is interconnected in the internet, this approach may be too narrow to enclose all aspects of the complex interactions taking place in the global, virtual theatre of operations. To communicate our objective of a wider perspective we have described the focus of our studies to be the influence mechanisms of the internet. What are the characteristics that make the internet unique? First of all, it is global. The reach provided for every message makes this environment attractive for anyone willing to cross national or cultural barriers. During past conflicts the most difficult part of an influence at-tempt was to pass a message to enemy soldiers. Today the internet acts as a metachannel for all media types and it is possible to get very close and personal through smartphones and other portable devices. The internet users are also more equal than those of the other media types. Social media, blogs and other communication networks give a voice to those who previously may have been silenced by gatekeepers of mass media. The anonymity provided in digital communication, however, carries with it some negative aspects as well. Individuals may fall prey to crime, continuous harassment or influence efforts by unknown actors with no accountability. The digital nature of the virtual environment enables the use of big data hacking tools for a variety of purposes. Today, many of these are used for marketing, but already there are signs of other uses as well. Combined with the vast memory of the internet, these tools are capable of learning our habits and desires more thoroughly than even our friends. This knowledge has many uses, some of which are displeasing and some criminal. As a technical approach we suggest a five-layer structure based on Martin C. Libicki’s model, as suggested by Martti Lehto. Thus, in our view the internets consists of physical, syntactic, semantic, service and cognitive layers. Human communication passes through all these layers and has to conform to different forms that shape it on its way. To assess the complex interactions of the internet we intend to apply the rhizome theory in-troduced by Deleuze and Guattari. Although abstract in nature, the theory describes a phe-nomenon in many ways similar to the virtual environment created by the internet and its users.