On new ways of communication

How it is intriguing that Museveni’s campaign has not sought to use new information weapons effectively

THE LAST WORD |  ANDREW M. MWENDA | Look at social media, where most Ugandans have migrated to for information about campaigns. Both campaigns, President Yoweri Museveni and his NRM and Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine, and his NUP, use rudimentary methods to gain tactical advantage in this new battlespace. The Museveni/NRM campaign would have been much more effective [here] because it has the resources to deploy these new information weapons with greater success. The neglect of an effective, technology-driven information and communication strategy only goes to prove my point: that Museveni/NRM really live in the past; the future is not on their radar.

I think because they have been very successful in the past, Museveni and the NRM think the tactics they used so successfully in the last will be used with similar effect in the new elections. This is the constraint most successful campaigns, organizations or countries always face. It is hard to learn from success because it makes someone complacent. Let me use military concepts to elaborate my point because it is the language Museveni and NRM understand best. What they need is an effective information operation to motivate their base and then win over the undecided and disorganize opponents.

The first step in information operations is analysis and segmentation. A well-designed use of information [and disinformation] is the most effective way to gain tactical advantage on the information battlefield. Generals in the military focus on artillery power and air dominance. In information warfare one needs to gain cultural power and information dominance. This is a data-driven arsenal designed to conquer hearts and minds in this new battlespace.

Borrowing from military psychological operations, the voter becomes a target of confusion, manipulation and deception. Facebook, Twitter (X), TikTok, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Google, etc. are not just companies. They are doorways into the hearts and minds of people. The strategy is microtargeting. The old marketing models focused on general features of target audiences, based on demographics of people such as young and old, rich and poor, male or female, education levels, etc. The new forms of targeting are micro and focus on the five-factor model of personality: agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness.

This has been the revolution of the information age. Machine learning algorithms ingest a large amount of voter data to divide the electorate into narrow segments based on their consumption habits, friends, purchases, likes, followings, engagements, etc. This way, they develop large volumes of data points – up to 5,000 about an individual. With this, one can predict, with deadly accuracy, which individual voters are the best targets to persuade about a cause or a candidate or turn out to vote. It can also predict with similar accuracy which voters can be made angry enough to abandon a side they support.

In devising an information weapon, it is helpful to think of the basic aspects of any military weapon system: the payload, the delivery system and the targeting system. For a missile, the payload is an explosive, the delivery system is the rocket-propelled fuselage, and the targeting system is the satellite or heat-seeking laser. With informational systems, the same components are present, but with a difference: the force you use is non-kinetic, i.e. you do not bomb things. In informational combat, the payload is often a story or a cultural narrative that will rally people behind a cause or turn them against your opponent.

Why are narratives important? Many public policy issues are complex. The great English economist, John Keynes, argued that ordinary people handle complexity through narratives i.e. readily digestible theories-in-miniature. Narratives spread easily, becoming public goods. But they can also stray far away from reality and produce what one can call “public bads”. For instance, the switch from the narrative of disease being caused by witchcraft to one that it is caused by germs is essential to improving public health. The reverse is true: if people think Ebola is a curse by angry gods, they may take little or no precautions to protect themselves.

The NRM undervalues information operations because it has a robust advantage in its control of the core elements of the state, especially its coercive instruments such as the army and police with their guns, APCs, water cannons, tanks, etc. Of course, it also has money to rent political support. Its opponents do not have such assets; that is why they are more skilful at generating narratives – deploying their information weapons more effectively. This is why NRM has been unable to counter internet-fuelled narratives created and spread by its opponents. In fact, if one used technology to study social media, one would find that both Museveni and NRM have egg on their face. Their achievements are known only to their supporters.

The lesson we learn from this is that guns, APCs, tanks and water cannons are useless against viral propaganda and internet-fuelled narratives. You cannot use a gun or tank to shoot at the internet. Therefore, traditional NRM military culture is increasingly useless in the face of internet-savvy opponents. The right response for the NRM is to gain total information dominance. This is because only the NRM has the resources to pay for vast quantities of data and deploy them with maximum effect on voters. The aim here would be to totally overwhelm and dominate the information space surrounding its core target audiences.

There are obvious complications in weaponizing information. And this is where NRM’s military culture leads it to poor targeting. Guns and missiles kill people no matter who or where they are deployed. A bomb will have the same effective whether it is thrown at a building in London, a factory in Moscow or a hospital in Chicago or a school in Beijing. But for information weapons to be effective, they have to be tailored according to multiple factors: personality, language, ethnic, religious or demographic group, culture, history, location, etc. A message that will be effective in Arua may be useless in Kabale and the one for the youth may not convince the elderly. A message for men may not sell among women, and one for the poor cannot be the same as the one for the rich.

But most effectively, a message that wins over people who are extroverted may be ineffective among the neurotic, and the one for the agreeable may not work for those who are open. Therefore, if you have to build an information weapon – the active deconstruction and manipulation of popular perceptions – you have to understand at a deep level what motivates people in a particular audience segment you are targeting.

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amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug