Abstract: The rise of cognitive warfare challenges trust within liberal democracies, necessitating interventions by political and societal stakeholders to strengthen societal resilience. This article outlines a theoretical framework of trust, distrust, cognitive warfare, and interventions to influence societal trust. It then illustrates how stakeholder analysis can be conducted in the context of societal trust and cognitive warfare to identify stakeholders, their stakes, and their power levels. Finally, it discusses the challenges faced by governmental stakeholders when trying to implement interventions for trust building.
Problem statement: How can we develop strategies for implementing interventions aimed at minimising the effects of disinformation and at increasing trust in the government?
So what?: Two key strategies are suggested to increase trust in the government. First, a systematic stakeholder analysis is recommended to help government stakeholders broaden their perspective and include diverse stakeholders with diverse interests and levels of power. Second, bridging the ‘say-do’ gap within the government is advised. To enact these strategies, governments must take responsibility and be accountable for their actions.
Conflict in the Grey Zone
In the current geopolitical landscape, the demarcation between conflict and peace is blurred. This is not a novel phenomenon, as there has always been an inherent lack of a distinct boundary between conflict and peace. However, what sets the present situation apart is the perpetual state of competition among nations. This constant rivalry, often referred to as the ‘Grey Zone Conflict’, signifies that nations are in an ongoing state of strategic competition, even in times of peace.[1] Cognitive warfare (CW) has emerged as an approach for wielding influence over societies by manipulating human thinking and behaviour. CW can involve the spread of disinformation, as well as other forms of influence, such as the exploitation or manipulation of information.[2] Such influence campaigns can have a direct or indirect negative effect on trust in information or actors, such as the government or scientists. Through deception, strategic goals can be achieved, such as inciting polarisation or increasing distrust towards the government or science. Moreover, rising inequality between wealthier groups and the general population fuels a deepening sense of mistrust in both social and political establishments. This mistrust can lead to discontent with the political landscape, an increase in populist sentiments, support for populist political parties, and a heightened sense of political distrust.[3]
Through deception, strategic goals can be achieved, such as inciting polarisation or increasing distrust towards the government or science.
Together, diminishing equality and cognitive warfare pose a challenge to trust within many liberal democracies, demanding interventions that enhance the resilience of our society. TNO research has identified several kinds of trust, methods to detect and monitor loss of trust in society, and interventions that may increase trust in social and political institutions.[4] However, political and societal stakeholders who can translate these interventions into practice and influence public sentiment need to be found.
Trust, Distrust and Cognitive Warfare
Understanding the interplay between trust and distrust is essential to effectively working towards optimised societal functioning and resilience, especially in the context of threats like disinformation and cognitive warfare. With this understanding, crucial intervention strategies to enhance trust and bolster societal resilience can be developed and implemented.
Trust
“Trust is often described as the ‘social glue’ in relationships, groups, and societies, in that it connects people and facilitates thoughts, motives, and behaviours that promote collective goals”. There is an intention to accept vulnerability based on positive expectations concerning the behaviour of others. Evidence shows that high trust leads to cooperation in uncertain times. In contrast, low trust can lead to polarisation within society or distrust towards the government.[5] Trust also helps us connect to people who are different from ourselves.[6]
Social and political trust are two forms that play a part in a democratic society. Political trust, or trust in government, is related to voting participation. Lower levels of political trust are usually the result of poor economic performance and corruption. Political trust is partly related to the state of the economy, which tends to fluctuate. Political trust is deemed essential for the functioning of representative democracy. A decrease in political trust challenges the quality of democratic governance. However, it is also argued that political scepticism can stimulate political engagement and signal a willingness to assess political institutions on their merits.[7] This suggests that the absence of political trust may not be inherently detrimental to democracy.
Social and political trust are two forms that play a part in a democratic society.
Social trust, a belief in the trustworthiness of others, plays a crucial role in societal cohesion and intergroup conflicts.[8], [9] Nevertheless, social trust between citizens is essential for maintaining political trust.
Distrust
In contemporary times, there has been a growing distrust in political institutions. The significant rise in scepticism towards political institutions has become increasingly visible through international events such as the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s electoral victory in 2016.[10] According to research by the NRC Handelsblad from 2021, the Childcare Benefits Scandal in the Netherlands has severely negatively impacted citizens’ trust in their political leaders. One of the principal explanations given by respondents for the decline in their trust was the notion that the scandal was not the consequence of an accident but rather of long-term, structural flaws built into the system.[11]
Cognitive Warfare
Whilst a government’s actions can significantly influence its citizens’ levels of political trust, external entities, such as foreign states or other parties, can also affect this trust. Such external entities can employ tactics that typically aim to destabilise societal structures and foster undemocratic tendencies and behaviours. Cognitive warfare aims to influence how a population thinks, feels, or acts. It works through actions that cause divisiveness and/or the manipulation of information, for example, by introducing disinformation or altering narratives.[12] Social media plays a role in distributing these narratives by making information accessible and easy to share. Messages might be encountered via a familiar source, making it easier to trust their content, and platforms facilitate the speedy sharing of messages, which may hamper fact-checking due to the amount of available information. Furthermore, social media algorithms are often shaped to drive constant engagement; to this end, they feed recipients content similar to that sought before. In doing so, they create echo chambers. If people are subjected to similar content over extended periods, they might be more inclined to believe and trust it.
Messages might be encountered via a familiar source, making it easier to trust their content, and platforms facilitate the speedy sharing of messages, which may hamper fact-checking due to the amount of available information.
When looking at political and social trust, it is important to ask why some people engage in anti-democratic behaviour while others do not. In times of uncertainty—such as during the COVID-19 pandemic—an overload of disinformation may destabilise trust in political institutions. When a society is subject to a disinformation attack, narratives often trigger fear, confusion, anger, hopelessness, and distrust in political institutions. Sustained distrust towards these institutions can have a deleterious effect on society.[13]
Social Impact of Decreased Trust
Levels of trust in other people and institutions seem lower today than in the past due to tensions within our societies and political systems and declining optimism resulting from rising economic insecurities.[14] The decrease of trust in political institutions, coupled with the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories, can erode the fundamental functions of these institutions in at least two ways.[15] Firstly, governmental and legal institutions are designed to protect citizens from harm and create a sense of safety among citizens. Suspicion towards these institutions thus reduces feelings of protection and increases fear of exploitation and perceived unfairness of procedural rules. This, in turn, fosters prejudice, exacerbates polarisation, and fuels intergroup conflict. Secondly, institutions play a crucial role in setting group norms and values. Distrust in these institutions encourages the perception that one’s community and one’s membership within it hold little meaning. This perception, in turn, diminishes people’s commitment, cooperation, and inclination towards prosocial behaviour.
During the COVID-19 crisis, the intricate interplay between social trust and individuals’ willingness to follow government regulations and guidelines became especially pronounced. Research in European countries highlighted a significant decrease in compliance with COVID-19 restrictions in nations characterised by low levels of governmental trust. The decision to vaccinate or abstain was found to be primarily influenced by trust in the institutions responsible for delivering the vaccines, as well as individuals’ prior experiences with these entities.[16] Moreover, studies showed that exposure to COVID-19 misinformation was associated with low trust in science and increased societal polarisation.[17] In the Netherlands, trust in the government emerged as a key predictor of public attitudes towards the appropriateness of adhering to social distancing measures.[18]
Though suspicion towards institutions may sometimes be rooted in personal assumptions (e.g., that the coronavirus is not a threat to one’s health), at other times, it may emerge from integrity violations, corruption, or cognitive warfare.[19] As an example, the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) government initiated a cognitive warfare campaign against Taiwan, intending to shift global attention away from allegations of their responsibility for the worldwide spread of COVID-19 and to shape public sentiment in Taiwan. The PRC’s primary goal was to introduce doubt and ambiguity within the Taiwanese populace concerning President Tsai Ing-wen’s healthcare policies while secondarily aiming to undermine the overall credibility of the government.[20] Although these PRC efforts did not seem to impact presidential approval in Taiwan significantly, they did seem to increase general scepticism among Taiwanese citizens of the vaccine developed and manufactured in their homeland.
The PRC’s primary goal was to introduce doubt and ambiguity within the Taiwanese populace concerning President Tsai Ing-wen’s healthcare policies while secondarily aiming to undermine the overall credibility of the government.
In conclusion, crises like COVID-19 and ongoing disinformation campaigns demonstrate the impact of decreased trust on society and underline the importance of treating cognitive warfare with gravity. It is essential to implement interventions that focus on enhancing societal and political trust to mitigate the influence of these disinformation campaigns on public opinion.
Interventions to Enhance Societal Trust
A comprehensive expert literature review helped to identify a variety of potentially effective interventions that could enhance trust and bolster societal resilience.[21] The review also sought to uncover interventions that could alleviate the detrimental impact of cognitive warfare on trust. The literature review yielded twenty-two interventions that could be organised along various dimensions:
- Temporal: Some interventions have long-term effects (e.g., psychological interventions and interventions intended to reduce social inequality), while others have short-term effects (e.g., awareness campaigns);
- Focus: Some interventions aim to build trust, while others aim to repair trust after a violation;
- Level of implementation: Interventions can be implemented at macro/(inter)national level (e.g., social welfare reforms, legislation), meso/community level (e.g., rebuilding trust in local police through physical reconciliation gatherings), or micro/individual level (e.g., improving people’s critical thinking abilities to assess the value of information they read online [i.e., media literacy] through educational programmes);
- Type of Trust: Interventions can be aimed to strengthen distinct types of trust, such as political, social, or technological trust; and
- Trust Calibration: Some interventions are aimed at strengthening trust (e.g., involving citizens in local politics), while others try to encourage a healthy level of critical thinking and mistrust (e.g., the Dutch campaign ‘Stay curious, stay critical’) in order to prevent trust violations by promoting realistic trust levels.
The results of the analysis demonstrate that trust is a fragile and complex concept. It is easier to break than to build. There is not a single intervention that can permanently reverse the trend of declining trust. Trust calibration is an ongoing process that requires constant effort. It should be built incrementally by both top-down and bottom-up approaches. This requires multiple interventions across the aforementioned dimensions, created and implemented by various stakeholders.
Method
Qualitative data was acquired through a literature review and a workshop to address the research questions regarding the implementation of interventions and the stakeholders necessary for their implementation.
Literature Research
Firstly, a literature review was performed. The primary objective of this literature review was to explore methods for conducting a stakeholder analysis and for identifying different stakes and levels of power.
Workshop
Subsequently, a workshop was organised to discuss the practical challenges of implementing interventions to increase trust. A wide range of representatives from different government organisations were invited. The group of attendees consisted of the Ministry of Defence, the NCTV (National Coordinator for Terrorism and Safety) and the Ministry of Justice and Security. The interventions to influence trust within society were discussed in terms of theory and practice. After presenting and discussing the trust interventions, the attendees were engaged in two tasks:
- Identifying challenges encountered during the implementation of interventions; and
- Determining the resources and organisations needed for successful implementation.
The second part of the workshop focused on stakeholder engagement. Attendees were prompted to identify the stakeholder(s) with whom they believed their organisations would need to collaborate in developing and implementing trust interventions.
Results
Who Is A Stakeholder
There are many definitions of stakeholders in the literature. In simple terms, stakeholders are individuals with an interest or concern in a project or undertaking.[22] In business management, where stakeholder analysis was applied initially, stakeholders are defined as “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of an organisation’s objectives.”[23] In the context of societal challenges, a stakeholder is describes as :
- anyone who has an influence on changing the status of a particular societal challenge in a country; or
- anyone who can potentially be harmed or have their rights affected by societal challenges.[24]
In this definition, stakeholders in a societal challenge in a country can be individuals and groups, as well as organisations or sectors. Furthermore, it is stated that stakeholders may either be a threat or a benefit. They prove helpful when they contribute to a nation’s efforts to tackle societal issues. Yet, they can become adversarial when their objectives conflict with the overarching mission. Moreover, stakeholders might exercise their influence intentionally or inadvertently, highlighting the dynamic and multifaceted nature of their impact on societal challenges.
Stakeholder Identification And Mapping
To identify relevant stakeholders in societal challenges,[25] developed an overview of stakeholder categories at the national and regional levels:
To effectively identify, prioritise, and engage with stakeholders, it is helpful to map them based on their ability to influence societal challenges and their level of interest in those challenges. One valuable framework for this purpose is the Power-Interest Matrix. In this model, power is defined as the combination of a range of factors, including general authority (i.e., the right to enforce obedience) and influence, but also the possession of resources that an organisation may require and the ability to reduce the alternatives for that organisation.[26]
Interest can be categorised as either direct or indirect interest in the success of an organisation or project.[27] Direct interest implies a stakeholder’s immediate and tangible connection to the outcomes, while indirect interest signifies a more remote or secondary concern regarding the actions and achievements of the organisation or project(s). This distinction adds depth to the analysis, enabling a more nuanced assessment of stakeholders and a more precise selection of engagement strategies within the framework.
The Power-Interest Matrix provides a structured approach for categorising stakeholders, allowing for more strategic and efficient tailoring of engagement strategies. By assessing stakeholders’ positions within this matrix, decision-makers can better understand how to effectively engage with and address societal challenges.
The Stakeholder Analysis Framework
The Stakeholder Analysis Framework presented in this report merges the various contributions into a single, useable form.[30], [31] We incorporated the four categories of the matrix – i.e. High Power (HP), High Interest (HI), Low Power (LP), and Low Interest (LI) – into the Stakeholder Identification Protocol. This allows framework users to pinpoint the primary stakeholders who might benefit from the interventions and insights and better understand those stakeholders’ positions and how to work more effectively with them.
In the next phase, we trialled the stakeholder table by filling it out for an anti-disinformation intervention campaign launched in 2019 by the Dutch government. The four-month campaign, called ‘Stay curious, stay critical’ or ‘Blijf nieuwsgierig, blijf kritisch’, aimed to warn the voting-age population about fake news during the election season. The campaign consisted of a website with information about disinformation and fake news, a checklist to help citizens determine whether information is genuine (e.g., based on the reliability of sources or the origin of photographs), and a short campaign video that was distributed through television and social media.[32] An evaluation of the campaign revealed that six out of ten Dutch citizens saw the campaign, that they were less inclined to respond to fake news after seeing the campaign, and that the percentage of people who ignored fake news stories increased from 76% to 83%.[33]
The overview resulting from this trial illustrates how ministries and other relevant organisations can identify stakeholders for interventions focused on cognitive warfare and trust. However, as filling out such a table inevitably involves subjective assessments, it is vital to involve a multidisciplinary team in completing the stakeholder table.
Workshop
Challenges Encountered during The Implementation Of Interventions
The first significant challenge that emerged from the workshop was the participants’ difficulty in identifying stakeholders beyond their own organisation. During the workshop, most stakeholders for societal trust and cognitive warfare were identified as internal government entities. It appeared that potential stakeholders external to their organisations, regardless of their level of influence and interest, were not adequately considered.
Second, a specific prerequisite to putting any intervention into action, upon which all attendees agreed, was the necessity to bridge the ‘say-do’ gap within the government. Participants expressed the importance of the government taking responsibility and being accountable for its actions to establish trustworthiness and credibility. As Uslaner states, responsive political elites “bear the potential to protect democratic societies from deepening divisions and a devaluation of democratic values and principles.” [35] While it is a prerequisite for putting interventions into action, it is also through these interventions that the say-do gap can be closed, and the government can move intentions towards actions.
Third, all attendees highlighted the necessity for tangible examples of interventions. These examples would address the insufficiency in developing and implementing interventions.
Resources and Organisations Needed for Successful Selection and Implementation
A question that garnered significant interest in the discussion revolved around how policymakers can be assisted in choosing suitable interventions. Many participants pointed out that their respective organisations had many ideas but often lacked the time and resources to implement them. To streamline this process, attendees expressed a desire for a collection of interventions or a framework that could offer guidance.
Additionally, participants observed that aligning all stakeholders can be challenging due to diverse perspectives and opinions regarding interventions and communication. Another challenge when working interdepartmentally is that “behavioural change may sound like behavioural influence which could imply the wrong intentions” (quote: workshop participant).
Discussion And Conclusion
Cognitive warfare and a decline in equality challenge trust within democratic societies, demanding interventions that enhance societal resilience. During an intervention, stakeholders can exert distinct types of influence, both positively and negatively, whether intentionally or unknowingly. Trust is fragile, and trust calibration is an ongoing effort.
Cognitive warfare and a decline in equality challenge trust within democratic societies, demanding interventions that enhance societal resilience.
Developing a framework makes it easier to identify stakeholders and help policymakers in this process. This framework can help map internal and external players according to their power and interest in the topic. Second, the stakeholders’ power to influence trust within society can be assessed through the Power-Interest matrix and through the knowledge of the individual stakeholders. Finally, by identifying all key players with the use of the framework and mapping them along the matrix, stakeholders can analyse their network and, in turn, be supported in selecting the right interventions for enhancing trust. Nevertheless, further work is needed to determine how these stakeholders can be supported to continue that effort.
Overall, future research into this topic could provide an extended overview of key stakeholders to provide adequate interventions to rebuild societal trust and close the government ‘say-do gap’. The identified stakeholders can translate interventions into practice using their influence, potentially increasing societal and political trust. The following steps to be taken are to discuss how these stakeholders can be further supported when putting interventions into practice and how to exert their influence precisely.
Jana Domrose is a researcher at TNO, specialising in social psychology. Her expertise lies in crisis management and -communication, particularly within the realm of national safety and security. With her research, she contributes to the extension of understanding human behaviour in times of crisis.
Tineke Hof is a senior research scientist at TNO with a background in social and organisational psychology. She has made contributions to the fields of information operations and military deception. Additionally, her research extends to multi-team performance, further demonstrating a commitment to understanding and improving complex organisational dynamics.
Roos Keja is a Scientist Integrator at TNO with a background in political sociology. She also served as a behavioural analyst for the Dutch Ministry of Defence. She contributes to advancing our understanding of the dynamics of government and society. Her research focus is currently on multi-domain operations and cognitive warfare. Her work informs military decision-making and training strategies.
Julia Broderick-Hale is a Scientist Innovator at TNO with a background in applied cognitive psychology. Exploring ways to create a safer, more resilient society through the lens of human cognition and behaviour is the common thread in her research topics, which include trust, (mis-)information processing, decision-making, cross-cultural collaboration, and sustainable technology adoption.
The views contained in this article are the authors’ alone and do not represent the views of TNO.
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