Infosõda – Eesti ekspertide visioon ja kogemus

Date

2009

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Tartu Ülikool

Abstract

Description

In this Thesis, the author sought to answer the central question: „How does the Estonian public define the nature of information war and the readiness of Estonia to information war?“ On the basis of the theoretical information presented in the thesis and the evaluations received from experts it can be concluded that the definition of information war is a complex one, with apparent confusion regarding its terminology. On the basis of definitions and various understandings, two approaches to defining information war can be discerned. The first approach states that weaponry of a classic war is used and the goal of the war is to get information or to protect own information. In the context of this Thesis, such a war is rather considered to be a war in the information age; information war is considered to be such war where information is being used as a weapon to attack the enemy and for self-defence. The central theoretician of the first part of this Thesis was selected by the author to be Pierre Bourdieu and his theory of power fields. On the basis of this theory, the power fields of an information war were mapped. For the most part, an information war takes place in the field of civil and military relations, the field of information technology and media, and the field of politics. Experts add to this the field of economy. Different fields are connected to each other and affect each other. Also, people are being influenced in all fields, and this can be considered to be the central activity of an information war. Information war is a so-called ideological war, where own ideology is being pushed on others in order to achieve goals and legitimise actions. Also, creating or escalating tensions between nations can be used successfully in such a war, because this stresses one of the largest parts of the self-image of people. For experts, the definition of information war has an intensive connection to the definitions of propaganda war and cyber war. These are often even considered to be synonyms of each other. On the basis of the theoretical sources and the evaluations of experts, the author of this Thesis considers information war to be the widest of these three definitions and the other two can be subsets of the first one. Information war is reviewed in this Thesis from both theoretical and empirical point of view, mostly in the context of a war between countries, i.e. state actors, or between groups with large influential power, i.e. non state actors. At the same time, practicians and journalists do not exclude also the possibility of information war between companies or individuals. The author provides own definition in this Thesis, stating that there are four grounds for calling an action “information war”: more than one “weapon” from the arsenal of an information war are used; activities have clear goals; activities are planned; and there is a party benefitting from the action. According to experts, Estonia is already involved in an information war. The experts consider this mainly in the context of a war between Estonia and Russia. It is the author’s opinion that this could be a dangerously narrowed point of view that could make Estonia blind to other countries or groups that can be potentially dangerous in the context of information war. The author has an opinion that this could also be a sign of a lack of a wide-base strategy for information war and a sign of a lack of mapping for various sources of danger. At the same time, a classical war of Russia against Estonia cannot be excluded as well, but this is considered to be significantly less probable. Taking into account the fact that both forms of war are dangerous to Estonia, but information war is considered to be significantly more probable, the author has an opinion that we should pay more attention to increasing our capacity for information war as well. It is the opinion of the author of this Thesis that the development of Estonia regarding its capacity for information war is hindered by the fact that experts perceive Estonia to be a passive country with few opportunities in an information war. In addition to that, the ethical question of information war is raised, and in this matter defensive activities are considered to be justified, but aggressive activities rather not. According to the estimate of the author, experts are bringing out more reasons why Estonia is unable to defend itself sufficiently in an information war or to counter its attackers, and less analysing the strengths and opportunities that we have. The experts point out that the wider public usually doesn’t perceive the psychological influencing from the other side, due to not perceiving the level of danger posed by an information war. The experts assess the effect of the messages sent by Estonia as rather modest in foreign countries, due to the small scale of our country. According to the opinion of the author, this serves to reduce Estonia into a passive role and this statement of the experts could be considered to be somewhat of a self-justification, used to explain or justify the lack of actions. According to the estimates of the experts, journalists usually participate in an information war, but many experts state that a large part of these journalists doesn’t perceive its role in the information war. Due to this, journalists are easily manipulated and can become puppets for the attackers or the defenders, made to act in a certain way. The experts are rather less worded regarding actions or inactions of the State. According to the estimate of the author, this could be due to the fact that it is not purposeful to talk about our actual capacities due to reasons of security, or due to there being not much to talk about as the capacity is really very small. One of the examples given about the experience of Estonia with information war is the so-called Bronze Soldier crisis that culminated in the spring of year 2007. There is no consensus about the outcomes of that crisis and the experts state that there were winners and losers on both Estonian and Russian side. As a conclusion it can be said that regardless of the multitude of definitions used and the confusion about the ideology surrounding information war, it is the opinion of experts that Estonia has been in an information war for a long time already. This activity takes place not only in the field of military, and more and more information wards are waged in other fields; this makes civilian population the target of information war. It is the opinion of the author that as a result of this, Estonia should also increase its competence regarding wide-base capacity for information war, without limiting it to the national defence sector. The author estimates that it is of critical importance in an information war, whether and how the various parties of the information war perceive their roles and what their actions are as a result of their perceptions.

Keywords

H Social Sciences (General), magistritööd

Citation