Information Warfare, Networked Influence, and Digital Security

This project is currently under review with Argumentation and Advocacy as part of a special issue edited by Professor Jim Kuypers.

Here is a draft of the article's abstract:

This article adapts concepts from social network analysis to extend argumentation and advocacy researchers’ tools for analyzing networked influence. Concepts such as network contagion, relational brokerage, network partitions, and network philia enable researchers to observe structural strategies for persuading at a network scale—that is, networked advocacy. Those concepts are situated in the developing traditions of digital and networked rhetoric, and especially in relation to Nicholas Paliewicz and George McHendry’s notion of “post-dialectical” argument. The article illustrates these concepts using the Russian Federation’s influence campaigns and information warfare directed at the 2016 and 2020 U.S. elections and public opinion regarding the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.