The term fourth estate, (or fourth power) is a term which is commonly used to refer to the press and news media both in explicit capacity of advocacy and implicit ability to frame political issues. Despite not formally being recognized as a component of existing political systems, the fourth estate plays a crucial role in holding political leaders accountable as it wields significant indirect social influence.
From a theoretical perspective, media published by the fourth estate is generally accepted as the undisputed truth by most of the general public, however as most phenomena present in today’s complex world, the observed data could be drastically different from our idealistic assumptions.
It's an accepted fact that the diverse assortment of organizations which combine to form the fourth estate have their own socio-political stance and the biases that come with it, however they all have a journalistic duty to report the truth (something that most of them abide by). Problems tend to appear when they unintentionally report misinformation, something which “information laundering” could contribute towards.
Information laundering could be defined as a type of black-propaganda (propaganda campaigns in which the source of this operation is intentionally kept hidden) in which misinformation is purposefully “laundered” into more legitimate sources of news (reputable members of the fourth estate). Unlike other methods present in black-propoganda (strategies by which creators of misinformation pay news agencies located in developing countries to intentionally propagate said misinformation), the legitimate trust-worthy news agency isn’t aware of the true nature of the camouflaged propaganda that they’re unintentionally publishing.
Information laundering was coined as a mixture of information and money laundering. The reason behind this was due to the fact that the process of information laundering exhibits many similar characteristics to the crime of money laundering, namely the covert introduction of misinformation (or black money for money laundering) into a larger flow of legitimate information (or money).
Contrary to popular belief, implementing an information laundering campaign is quite easy in today’s ever-connected digital world. Most of these successful operations tend to follow the steps listed below:
1. Create a fake persona to be the public face of the “person” who starts the chain of information laundering.
2. Create a fake social media profile(s) for the above-mentioned persona (or any such channel) and make it seem realistic enough to pass for an account being maintained by an actual person.
3. Engage in online activities to create a realistic digital footprint for this proxy individual.
4. Publish/post the required misinformation that you want to propagate (make sure that it is something that the “person” maintaining the account “believes” in).
5. Try to gain traction for the propaganda that you’re trying to spread:
a) You could gain traction via organic growth as unsuspecting people repost your initial misinformation. This type of growth is dependent on the way that this misinformation is presented and the digital footprint of the persona being utilized.
b) You could gain traction via automated bots, however the chances of being caught and the operation ultimately failing increases if you pursue this strategy.
6. If enough people believe in this misinformation that you planted, mainstream media (the fourth estate) will eventually treat this as legitimate news.
7. If you’ve covered up your tracks well, you’ve succeeded in your mission, you have successfully laundered misinformation into the mainstream media, and it's being treated as something legitimate by most of your targets and the illustrious fourth estate.
It should be noted that the primary objective of information laundering is to wipe the perpetrators’ figurative fingerprints from the misinformation being laundered, that is to keep the source of this propaganda hidden. Additionally it has been observed that this is a preferred strategy allegedly implemented by modern Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies (among others) as a critical front in many of their hybrid campaigns (namely against western nations), with Russia becoming infamous in the intelligence community as a global troll farm.
A notable example of information laundering would be the various misinformation campaigns launched by Russia to meddle with the 2016 US Presidential election. More recent examples of information laundering would be the alleged attempts by both Russian and Chinese state-backed players to interfere with the 2020 US Presidential election.
In conclusion, threats like misinformation and state-backed propaganda campaigns provide a new challenge to national security policy makers and the global counterintelligence community.
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