ICIW2008: Religion, Ideology and Information Warfare

Geoffrey Darnton, Bournemouth University, UK

  • “if you can get into people’s heads you can achieve anything”
  • different consequences if people fear being killed vs. wanting to be killed
  • scope and key issues
    • currently, mainly conceptual
    • conflics vs. war
    • war and conflict can only occur if people are willing to play
    • “willing” – coercion or real willingness
    • belief systems are critical in info warfare
  • war v conflict
    • technically war is a legal state
    • iw = information warfare
    • maybe should be saying information conflict
    • Civilian-ization of warfare via info technologies
  • origins of war
    • technology
    • law
    • social organization
    • opinions and attitudes concerning basic values
  • willingness
  • religion and ideology
    • same thing or not?
    • both are complex sets of characteristics
    • why does it matter in the discussion of IW?
    • many acts of conflict and war are done n the name of furthering or preserving some important value of belief
  • meta ideo-religious framework?
    • experiential
    • ritual
    • mythology
    • ethics
    • doctrine
    • social
  • framework extensions
    • symbols
    • key personalities
    • faith
    • deification or reification
  • example religions
    • middle eastern
    • indian
    • far eastern
  • example ideologies
    • capitalism
    • marxism
    • humanism
    • social anarchism
    • democracy
    • are there characteristics similar to religions?
  • proselytizing
    • done both by religions and ideologies
    • often accompanied by behaviour to discourage “non belivers”
  • studies of war
    • stats based on religious wars
  • extensions to ideology
    • how many wars have been fought based on ideology?
  • empirical questions
    • how many have been killed as consequence of the pursuit of religion
    • …pursuit of ideology
    • predict that now ideology now kills more than religion
  • Information operations
    • targeted at belief systems
    • goal to move people within info space
    • change beliefs
    • change value judgments
    • relies on underlying epidemiological model for spread of beliefs
  • causes of war
    • seeking causes may be futile if war is a persistent human phenomenon
    • suggests that something like “Information Peaceware”
  • conclusion
    • characteristics of religions and ideologies are similar for practical purposes to have the same effects when it comes to war and conflict.
Posted in UncategorizedTagged

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *