journal article
Quantifying the engagement effectiveness of cyber cognitive attacks: a behavioral metric for disinformation campaigns
Abstract
As cyber-enabled cognitive attacks, or cyber cognitive attacks, increasingly shape conflict environments, the ability to systematically assess their effects has become a critical analytical gap. This paper introduces a novel metric for quantifying the engagement effectiveness of cyber cognitive attacks through a novel metric that accounts for both the type and the volume of observable user engagement relative to attacker-generated transmissions. Applied to illustrative cases across major social media platforms, this study shows how engagement effectiveness captures not only exposure but also varying depths of behavioural interaction and amplification. By operationalizing engagement as a measurable indicator of attack performance, this study contributes a scalable method for comparative analysis and supports more rigorous assessment of cognitive influence operations within contemporary security contexts. © This work was authored as part of the Contributor’s official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Author keywords
behavioural metric; cognitive warfare; cyber cognitive attacks; disinformation; hybrid warfare; information operations; social media; social media analytics