Digital Cognitive Defence: Combatting Disinformation, Misinformation and Malign Influence
DMMI can have significant impacts on an organisation’s mission - Join us for a hands-on workshop, as we will focuses on giving participants the knowledge and skills necessary to recognise, manage and build resilience to DMMI.
About this event
From armed conflicts, election campaigns, and vaccine rollouts to financial fraud and brand reputations, disinformation, misinformation, and malign influence (DMMI) is a global, regional, and local problem.
New tools and techniques have allowed nations, states, extremists, and other malevolent actors to carry out cyber-enabled cognitive hacking and surgical strikes on public opinion- spreading disinformation, distrust and discord.
SES and senior executives play a central role setting the strategic direction of their organisations and building a positive, durable and adaptive workplace culture.
In multi-agency environments, senior leaders need the ability to bring new policy agendas forward, with the capacity to persuade others maintaining the confidence of government and stakeholders.
DMMI can have significant impacts on an organisation’s mission. This workshop strengthens the leadership capabilities of experienced SES to Executive Level leaders - focusing on accountabilities and enriching learning outcomes with nuanced perspectives giving participants the knowledge and skills necessary to recognise, manage and build resilience to DMMI.
The workshop aimed to explore the main players, case examples, key tactics and techniques used by malign actors and emerging best practices.
By the end of the workshop, participants will:
- Explore the range of causes driving DMMI and how it effects leadership
- Examine the impact of DMMI from different perspectives
- Explore the concepts of power, authenticity, control, influence, acting politically and the performance of leadership behaviours
- Understand the origins DMMI and how social media, media and state platforms can amplify the impact of online campaigns
- Be familiarised with main actors, strategic intention and key tactics, techniques and procedures and gain a deeper understanding of these through case studies
- Understand basic techniques for validating information and analysing DMMI and analysis of techniques employed by state and non-state actors
- Understand key psychological and socio-cultural aspects of DMMI, including vulnerability, biases, and ways to build resilience
- Be introduced to some of the larger social and political aspects of DMMI, and explore ways to combat and build resilience to DMMI
Our guest speakers:
- Dr Morgan Saletta, Deputy Director, The Hunt Lab for Intelligence Research, University of Melbourne
- Steven Coomber, Senior Manager, Synergy Group
- Damian Cardona Onses, Director of the UN Information Centre
- Kersti Eesmaa, Ambassador of Estonia
**Light morning & afternoon tea and lunch is included.
Speakers
New York, 20 April 2022. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has appointed Damian Cardona Onses of Spain as Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Canberra, Australia. Mr. Cardona assumed his duties on 20 April.
A field office of the United Nations Department of Global Communications, the United Nations Information Centre in Canberra provides services to Australia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Mr. Cardona has more than 26 years of experience in strategic communications, crisis communications, outreach and campaigns within the United Nations system. Before his appointment to Canberra, he served as United Nations Information Centre Director in Dakar, Senegal (covering French-speaking Africa) and in Bogota (covering Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela). In 2021, he was seconded to the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia as Chief of Strategic Communications and Public Information.
Having served in peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mali and Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mr. Cardona was also Chief of Media Relations and Spokesperson for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and Special Adviser to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General.
Before joining the United Nations, Mr. Cardona was based in Amman, Jordan, from 1998to 2002 as Regional Middle East Communications Delegate for the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC). He had been the Director of International Relations for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization-sponsored Universal Forum of Cultures Barcelona 2004.
Mr. Cardona holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Barcelona and master’s degree on international relations from the Instituted’ Études Politiques in Grenoble, France.
He is fluent in English, French, Spanish and Catalan, and has a good working knowledge of Haitian Creole, Italian and Portuguese.
Mr. Cardona is married and has three children.
She started working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia in 1996 and over the years has served there as the Director General of two departments, namely Department for Human Resources and most recently, over the period of 5 years in Consular Department.
Ms. Eesmaa has been posted at the Estonian UN delegation in Geneva and at the Permanent Representation of Estonia to EU in Brussels, covering international trade issues during both postings.
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