Section 2: Influence Indicators in Practice

Overview

This section contains three chapters that outline how indicators of influence can be applied, and how.

The first chapter lists and describes a range of indicators, referred to here as the Indicators Toolbox. They include:

• Indicators from the micro, meso and macro chapters, compiled and summarised; and
• Additional indicators that are commonly used in systematic planning and assessments of influence activities, organised into three sections: audience analysis, campaign evaluation, and threat assessment of malign influence.
• The second chapter describes how indicators can be organised into systematic, structured, goal-orientated processes. These goals are typically (and aligned with the previous point) planning influence activities (foregrounding audience analysis), monitoring and evaluating influence activities; and assessments of the threats, activities, outcomes and effects of malign influence activities.

These structured processes are based on models derived from:

• Public relations and strategic communications literature on campaign planning and evaluation;
• Literature on data-driven campaigning (DDC), especially in the context of political communication campaigns; and
• Literature outlining approaches to identification of and response to malign influence activities, including foreign interference and disinformation campaigns.

The third chapter provides an annotated list of examples of planning, evaluation and threat assessments, collated from available open-source examples and scholarly literature. These examples include case studies of specific assessments as well as frameworks that have been proposed for wider application.