Region Värmland strengthening resilience to disinformation
Disinformation and malign information influence are continuously directed at Sweden. Ahead of the election year, Region Värmland has developed training materials in collaboration with the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency to boost knowledge and strengthen the organisation’s ability to tackle such influence.
Region Värmland is encountering disinformation more and more frequently, and has become increasingly aware of how foreign powers can use and exploit different narratives to undermine trust in authorities and organisations. In collaboration with the Psychological Defence Agency and the municipality of Karlstad, the region has developed training materials on malign information influence ahead of the election year.
“As a region, we have a responsibility to safeguard democracy, and ahead of the election year we identified a need to improve our knowledge – within the communications department, among officials and, not least, our elected representatives – to be better prepared for various situations that may arise. Our hope is that this training will help improve our knowledge and thus our ability to identify, detect and deal with malign information influence,” says Director of Communications Hedvig Bergenheim.
The new security landscape has led regions to work intensively on strengthening the robustness of their core operations. However, according to Hedwig Bergenheim, focus often tends to land on the ‘hard’ issues such as inventory management, logistics and resource provision.
“In the region, we also have an important role in psychological defence. We are to engage in strengthening our own and inhabitants’ resistance to propaganda, disinformation and influence so that we can maintain trust, calm and willingness to defend even in times of crisis or war. The greatest benefit of the materials is that they help to put these issues onto the agenda of both officials and elected representatives,” continues Hedvig Bergenheim.
For those wishing to undertake similar training, Hedvig Bergenheim recommends that several people be trained to enable them to present the material and to reach out broadly across the organisation. She also highlights the importance of tailoring the content.
“Use the material as a starting point, but try to find situations or examples that could arise in your own organisation; this will make the discussions more productive. While the materials are focused on the Swedish elections in September, the challenges will persist even after the elections, so consider training in a longer-term perspective too,” explains Hedvig Bergenheim.
Heightened capabilities for resisting malign information influence
Åsa Johansson, member of the regional executive board, sees the training as an important tool for understanding what methods are used to influence elected representatives and organisations.
“I appreciate that we’ve had time for joint reflections and discussions to collectively improve our ability to discern and tackle disinformation and malign information influence. For me, it’s been valuable to improve my awareness of what elected representatives or organisations can be exposed to through descriptions of different examples and methods,” explains Åsa Johansson.
She highlights in particular how sophisticated the techniques have become and how hard it can be to discern content.
“As an elected representative, you can be both a target and a mediator of disinformation, so you have to be critical of sources and not react on a gut instinct to provocative content, for example” says Åsa Johansson.
She finds that the training has provided valuable insights into how opinion-leading – which is a legitimate part of democracy – can be exploited by actors with malign intentions.
“As elected representatives, we work constantly with opinion-leading, i.e legitimate influence. This is an important part of our democracy. At the same time, we are an attractive target group for malign information influence. It’s been valuable to have had time to discuss and reflect on this, and to become better equipped for both discerning and dealing with any situations that may arise,” says Åsa Johansson.
Her message to other regions and municipalities is clear.
“My message is to be sure that you spend time on this. For me, it’s been an eye-opener, and it’s important that we bolster our knowledge and resilience in these matters. Our focus is now on the election, but since influence campaigns are ongoing all the time and antagonists are becoming increasingly sophisticated, it would be valuable to undertake training more regularly, not just once per electoral cycle,” adds Åsa Johansson.