Social Media Activism From an Information Warfare and Security Perspective

The use of social media in advocacy, and particularly transnational advocacy, raises concerns of privacy and security for those conducting the advocacy and their contacts on social media. This chapter presents high-level summaries of cases of social media in advocacy and activism from the perspectives of information warfare and information security. From an analysis of these, the impact and relationships of social media in transnational advocacy and information security is discussed. Whilst online advocacy can be considered to be a form of information warfare aligned to a Cyber Macht theory, it can be argued that social media advocacy negatively impacts information security as it encourages various actors to actively attempt to breach security.