Chapter 31 Further Reading: State-Sponsored Disinformation and Information Warfare

Annotations provide guidance on each work's argument, significance, and appropriate level of engagement.

Foundational Books

1. Rid, Thomas. Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.

The definitive historical account of state-sponsored disinformation from the Cold War to the present. Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, draws on declassified documents from multiple national archives to trace the history of active measures across both Soviet and Western operations. The book is essential for understanding Operation INFEKTION in full historical context, and its analysis of how digital technology has transformed (rather than created) the disinformation landscape is invaluable. Particularly strong on the continuities between Cold War and contemporary operations; appropriately skeptical of both exaggerated and minimized assessments of operational impact. Essential reading for anyone seeking deep engagement with the historical material.

2. Pomerantsev, Peter. This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality. PublicAffairs, 2019.

Pomerantsev, a journalist and researcher who grew up in the Soviet Union and worked in Russian media, provides an essential ethnographic and analytical account of contemporary information warfare. Where academic texts analyze operations from the outside, Pomerantsev writes from inside the Russian media ecosystem and interviews participants in disinformation operations globally. The book's central argument — that contemporary information warfare aims at making truth itself seem impossible rather than at promoting specific false beliefs — is one of the most important analytical insights in the field. Accessible to undergraduate students while maintaining analytical depth.

3. Stengel, Richard. Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2019.

Stengel, who served as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs 2013-2016, provides an insider's account of US government efforts to counter disinformation during a pivotal period. The book combines personal narrative with policy analysis, offering a perspective on the institutional and bureaucratic constraints that shape government counter-disinformation responses. Valuable for students interested in policy implementation realities; should be read alongside more critical academic assessments of US counter-disinformation effectiveness.

Research Reports and Academic Sources

4. Paul, Christopher, and Miriam Matthews. "The Russian 'Firehose of Falsehood' Propaganda Model: Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It." RAND Corporation, 2016.

The paper that introduced the "Firehose of Falsehood" framework into mainstream analytical discourse. Available free at rand.org. Essential primary reading: only 16 pages, it covers the model's four key characteristics, the psychological mechanisms that make it effective (illusory truth effect, processing fluency), and proposed counter-measures. Students should read the original rather than secondary summaries; the paper's measured analytical tone models the appropriate approach to these questions. A landmark contribution to counter-disinformation analysis.

5. DiResta, Renée, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Jonathan Albright, et al. "The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency." US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 2018.

One of three reports submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee analyzing IRA operations, this report by the New Knowledge team (Renée DiResta and colleagues) provides the most detailed publicly available analysis of IRA content, targeting strategy, and tactics. Covers the IRA's targeting of Black American audiences, its use of different platforms, and its specific content themes. Available publicly at intelligence.senate.gov. Methodologically detailed and analytically rigorous; appropriate for undergraduate research.

6. Bergh, Astrid, and Nora Biteniece-Ketners, eds. StratCom Laughs: Research on Humour in Strategic Communications. NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, 2019.

An example of the StratCom COE's research portfolio. The StratCom COE (stratcomcoe.org) publishes extensive research on information warfare, Russian operations, hybrid warfare, and counter-disinformation — most available freely online. Students are encouraged to explore the full StratCom COE research catalog for current research, particularly reports on social media manipulation, bot networks, and Baltic region information security. The COE's annual reports on Russian and Chinese information operations are among the best regularly updated analytical resources available.

7. Howard, Philip N. Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Spammers and Political Operatives. Yale University Press, 2020.

Howard, the founding director of the Oxford Internet Institute's Computational Propaganda Project, synthesizes years of research on computational propaganda — the use of algorithms, automation, and big data for political manipulation. The book covers troll farms, bot networks, junk news, and the role of social media platforms in enabling and profiting from political manipulation. Strong on the global comparative dimension: the Computational Propaganda Project has documented influence operations in more than 70 countries, and Howard's comparative analysis avoids the US-centric focus of much Anglo-American writing in this area.

8. Galeotti, Mark. "I'm Sorry for Creating the 'Gerasimov Doctrine.'" Foreign Policy, March 5, 2018.

A remarkable act of intellectual honesty: the analyst who coined the phrase "Gerasimov Doctrine" publicly acknowledges and explains his error, arguing that the influential framework was based on a misreading of what Gerasimov actually wrote. Available freely online at foreignpolicy.com. Essential reading for understanding how secondary source distortion produces influential analytical errors — and as a model of the intellectual courage required to correct them publicly. Short (approximately 2,000 words) and appropriate for undergraduate assignment.

9. EU East StratCom Task Force. EUvsDisinfo Database Reports. European External Action Service, ongoing.

The EUvsDisinfo database (euvsdisinfo.eu) is the most comprehensive public repository of catalogued disinformation cases, with thousands of entries documenting specific false narratives, their sources, and debunking information. The database and accompanying "Disinformation Review" newsletter are essential resources for anyone studying Russian disinformation specifically. Students should engage with the database directly as a primary source and also read analytical reports about its coverage gaps and methodological limitations (see Tenove, 2020, "Protecting Democracy from Disinformation," for a critical assessment).

10. King, Gary, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret Roberts. "How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument." American Political Science Review 111, no. 3 (2017): 484-501.

The landmark quantitative study of China's 50-cent army, based on leaked Chinese government documents. King, Pan, and Roberts obtained and analyzed authentic wumao posts, finding approximately 448 million fabricated posts per year and documenting that the content primarily employs "strategic distraction" (changing the subject) rather than argumentation. Methodologically sophisticated and highly significant for understanding the differences between Chinese and Russian influence operation strategies. Available through academic library databases; appropriate for advanced undergraduate research.

11. Watts, Clint. Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News. HarperCollins, 2018.

Watts, a former FBI special agent and military intelligence officer, provides an accessible account of his work tracking state-sponsored and extremist influence operations online. The book combines first-person narrative with policy analysis and is particularly strong on the terrorist-to-state-actor continuum of influence operations and on the role of social media platforms in enabling them. Appropriate for students seeking accessible introductions before engaging with more technical academic literature.

12. van der Linden, Sander. Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity. W.W. Norton, 2023.

The leading academic authority on inoculation theory and prebunking applies this research to a general audience. Van der Linden's psychological research at Cambridge has produced "Bad News," "Go Viral," and similar prebunking games now being deployed in multiple countries, and this book synthesizes the theoretical foundations of that work. Essential for understanding why prebunking is more effective than debunking and how the Helsinki model's inoculation approach works psychologically. Accessible to undergraduates while grounded in rigorous experimental research.

13. Jankowicz, Nina. How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict. I.B. Tauris, 2020.

Jankowicz, who has worked with governments in Eastern Europe on counter-disinformation programs, provides comparative analysis of how different countries — particularly those in Russia's near-abroad — have responded to Russian information warfare. The book is particularly strong on Ukraine, Poland, and other frontline states' experiences, offering lessons for Western democracies that have faced less sustained information warfare. Accessibly written and draws on extensive field research in affected countries.

14. Nakashima, Ellen, and Shane Harris. To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq. Penguin, 2019.

This is recommended not as a book specifically about state-sponsored disinformation but as an essential case study in how intelligence communities can be misused for disinformation purposes from within democratic governments. The Iraq WMD intelligence failure — in which intelligence assessments were selectively used, cherry-picked, and in some cases fabricated to build a public case for war — demonstrates that state-sponsored disinformation is not exclusively a problem of adversary states. Democratic governments have their own track record of manipulating information environments for political purposes, and this history is essential context for understanding public trust deficits.

15. Benkler, Yochai, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts. Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics. Oxford University Press, 2018.

A landmark empirical study of the American information ecosystem during the 2016 election cycle, based on systematic analysis of four million news stories. Benkler, Faris, and Roberts argue that the primary driver of American disinformation is not Russian foreign interference but domestic structural features of right-wing partisan media — its asymmetric insularity, propaganda feedback loops, and relationship with mainstream media. This argument is contested but important; it represents the strongest available scholarly argument for prioritizing domestic information ecosystem reform over counter-foreign-interference measures. Essential for students who want to engage seriously with debates about the relative importance of foreign vs. domestic drivers of American disinformation.