Political sectarianism, disinformation, and cyberthreats

Abstract

Politics in the United States has been noted for its rising degree of polarization since the 1990s, and recent attention and alarm has focused on increasingly hostile political behavior which cannot be explained in terms of polarization. Political sectarianism, a concept developed to describe the sorting of individuals into political parties based on partisan identity rather than policy preferences and the attendant, is responsible for the ascendancy of out-group hatred as the primary motivator of voting, and is influenced by economic, social, technological, and political forces. Political sectarianism’s severity has been established, but its effects on society, particularly cybersecurity, have not yet been explored in detail. This thesis proposes that political sectarianism increases the uptake of political disinformation, which in turn may raise the risk of social engineering-based cyberattacks on vulnerable segments of the American population. Political sectarianism increases the chance that partisans seek out or believe disinformation to support their partisan identity. In turn, political disinformation may be defined as social engineering, a sort of cognitive hacking which has been abused by phishers and cyberattackers to carry out attacks on networks and individuals. The present state of politically-influenced cyber scams and attacks will be discussed, along with the future avenues that adversaries may take to perform cyberattacks. Policy-based solutions designed to mitigate or solve the corrosive effects of political sectarianism may have the greatest efficacy at solving the downstream issues of disinformation and cyber threats, but rely on concerted bipartisan action and may be vulnerable to partisan counter-efforts. Cybersecurity- and technology-based solutions have been proposed as well: interactive education to teach people about how disinformation or phishing campaigns has shown promise, and social media companies have the ability to tailor algorithms and tools to combat disinformation on their platforms.