Foreign Interference Online: Where Disinformation Infringes on Freedom of Thought (Policy Brief No. 3)

Wesley Wark's policy brief introduces a conceptually sharp framing for the psychological objective of disinformation campaigns: 'fearful unknowing' — the state of deliberately induced epistemic uncertainty and anxiety that the most intense campaigns produce. Rather than changing minds to specific false beliefs, the most sophisticated disinformation operations aim to make audiences uncertain about what is true, whom to trust, and whether coherent knowledge is possible at all. The most intensive campaigns constitute 'cognitive warfare' in Wark's terminology.

The 'fearful unknowing' concept is more precise than the commonly used 'epistemic chaos' or 'firehose of falsehood' framings, because it captures the affective dimension — the anxiety and paralysis that accompany induced uncertainty — alongside the epistemic dimension. For practitioners designing counter-disinformation messaging and resilience programmes, understanding that the objective is often fearful unknowing rather than specific belief change has implications for what effective counter-measures look like. Applied to the Canadian foreign interference inquiry, the brief proposes government-led enhancement of public understanding as the primary counter — a recommendation that connects to the broader debate about institutional communication in information-disordered environments.