Spencer Sproul

Political Science

Mentor: Briana Bowen

Fake News!: Russian Disinformation Targets Cognitive Biases in Physical and Cyber
Mediums

“Fake news” is old news. It is generally well accepted that Russia tampered with the 2016 elections and spreads misinformation, but current conversation regarding these practices are missing an important piece. Large proportions of current literature are about whether or not this is a new strategy or on how employment of and countermeasures to these campaigns revolve around cyberspace. These conversations are important, but they fail to answer how they are so effective. This paper will show that Russian disinformation targets decision-making biases innate in all humanity, primarily the Availability Bias, the Availability Cascade, and the Confirmation Bias. These basic principles are the core of Russian disinformation tactics and they are the target of both cyber AND real world means. They have been the target of Russian reality manipulation for quite some time. Understanding what is actually under attack and the reasons why will help America take actions in the right direction to build resilience and preventative measures, not just continue to react to attacks.