Coordinated inauthentic behavior: An innovative manipulation tactic to amplify COVID-19 anti-vaccine communication outreach via social media

Abstract

Coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) is a manipulative communication tactic that uses a mix of authentic, fake, and duplicated social media accounts to operate as an adversarial network (AN) across multiple social media platforms. The article aims to clarify how CIB's emerging communication tactic “secretly” exploits technology to massively harass, harm, or mislead the online debate around crucial issues for society, like the COVID-19 vaccination. CIB's manipulative operations could be one of the greatest threats to freedom of expression and democracy in our society. CIB campaigns mislead others by acting with pre-arranged exceptional similarity and “secret” operations. Previous theoretical frameworks failed to evaluate the role of CIB on vaccination attitudes and behavior. In light of recent international and interdisciplinary CIB research, this study critically analyzes the case of a COVID-19 anti-vaccine adversarial network removed from Meta at the end of 2021 for brigading. A violent and harmful attempt to tactically manipulate the COVID-19 vaccine debate in Italy, France, and Germany. The following focal issues are discussed: (1) CIB manipulative operations, (2) their extensions, and (3) challenges in CIB's identification. The article shows that CIB acts in three domains: (i) structuring inauthentic online communities, (ii) exploiting social media technology, and (iii) deceiving algorithms to extend communication outreach to unaware social media users, a matter of concern for the general audience of CIB-illiterates. Upcoming threats, open issues, and future research directions are discussed.