EAGER: The Conceptual Landscape of Information Manipulation

一个新兴的网络安全前沿是信息操纵，对手可能试图扭曲信息以影响观点、思想或行动。信息操纵可以采取多种形式，从搜索中毒等公然攻击，虚假在线评论等错误信息，到个性化搜索和有偏见的新闻等微妙扭曲。如果不加以控制，信息操纵会损害我们的经济、文化和民主。过去的研究工作都是临时的，集中在特定类型的信息操纵上。这项工作旨在为信息操纵的研究奠定基础。有三个研究组成部分：(1)调查大量关于信息操纵的相关学术工作，并调查已建立的操纵类型如何在互联网上发挥作用，以及互联网是否会产生新的操纵类型；(2)生成一个关于信息操纵的总体概念框架，以捕捉互联网上各种形式的现有和可能的操纵实践的基本属性；(3)建立信息操纵的分类，便于制定针对每一类操纵的一般对策。这个项目与社会科学研究紧密结合在一起。特别是，政治和社会行为研究确定了至少两千年来关于信息操纵的重要见解，并帮助定义了互联网时代信息操纵的行动者、目标、机制和策略的模型。信息操纵的历史观点和概念化为开发一个全面的框架来对抗信息操纵提供了基础。

A new, emergent cybersecurity frontier is information manipulation, whereby adversaries may attempt to distort information to influence opinion, thought, or action. Information manipulation can take many shapes and forms, from blatant attacks such as search-poisoning, misinformation such as bogus on-line reviews, to subtle distortion such as personalized search and biased news. Left unchecked, information manipulation can harm our economy, culture, and democracy. Past research efforts have been ad-hoc and focused on specific kinds of information manipulation. This work aims to lay the foundations of research in information manipulation. There are three research components: (1) surveying the long line of relevant scholarly work on information manipulation, and investigating how the established types of manipulation play out on the Internet and if the Internet gives rise to novel types of manipulation, (2) generating an overarching conceptual framework about information manipulation to capture the basic properties of various forms of existing and possible manipulation practices on the Internet, and (3) developing taxonomy of information manipulation that facilitates the development of general countermeasure for each category of manipulation. This project is tightly integrated with social-science research. In particular, political and social behavioral study identifies the important insights from at least two millennia of scholarship on information manipulation and help define models of the actors, goals, mechanisms, and strategies of information manipulation in the Internet era. The historical perspectives and conceptualization of information manipulation provide the foundation for developing a comprehensive framework to counter information manipulation.