After an accurate and correct statement of the goal of the information operation, it is necessary to determine its general strategy – a general, not detailed plan covering a long period of time, a way to achieve a complex goal.
The strategy may look like this: financial weakening of a competitor due to the formation of distrust among its major partners, customers, and creditors.
Or, for the goal of “motivating the audience to stop resistance,” the strategy can be formulated as follows: to form in the target audience distrust of their leadership, a sense of hopelessness and a desire to surrender.
Information operation scenario
Based on an understanding of the ultimate goal of the operation, the overall strategy, who the target audience is, its characteristics and vulnerabilities, a scenario of impact on the audience is formulated.
The script is a general description of the sequence of actions, with details of important features and resembles a play with a description of the scenes and dialogues of the characters with remarks. The script answers the questions – what meanings and what audience needs to be conveyed.
An example of a simplified scenario for a commercial task for a competitor:
- 1. Someone reports in the local media that there are some problems in the KKK company, they steal, they don’t want to work, etc.;
- 2. Users of social networks pick up the material and discuss something there, thinking up new details;
- 3. Material appears in the local press about abuses by the main client of KKK;
- 4. In parallel, a publication appears about possible family ties in the KKK, nepotism and mediocrity of relatives;
- 5. An unknown person, based on these data, publishes an “investigation” about theft in the “KKK” and problems with law enforcement agencies, interspersed with information about serious financial problems.
An example of a simplified scenario for the task “motivate CA-1 to stop resistance”:
- 1. to form a mistrust of the target audience in their leadership – through publicizing the facts of theft, corruption, nepotism;
- 2. to create a feeling of hopelessness among the target audience – through the dissemination of materials about incompetence, about the immoral behavior of relatives, about betraying the interests of the country;
- 3. to form in the target audience the desire to surrender – to show the audience that they are dying for the interests of others, which is much better on this side and offer a variant of self-justification for surrender;
