Propaganda: From Disinformation and Influence to Operations and Information Warfare

Lukasz Olejnik — an independent cybersecurity researcher and scholar who has advised the International Committee of the Red Cross and the EU on cyber policy — brings a technical analyst's rigour to the study of propaganda as a contemporary operational instrument. The book bridges the gap between academic propaganda studies and operational information warfare, treating propaganda not as a historical or rhetorical phenomenon but as an active component of modern statecraft and conflict that intersects with cyber operations, AI-generated content, and digital influence campaigns.

What distinguishes this from most contemporary disinformation literature is its systematic attention to the technical infrastructure through which modern propaganda operates — the platforms, the algorithms, the data pipelines, and the automation tools that make influence operations at scale possible. Olejnik's background in cybersecurity gives him analytical access to dimensions of the problem that political scientists and communication scholars typically lack. For practitioners who need to understand not just what influence operations do but how they are technically executed, this book fills a significant gap. Published by Oxford University Press in 2024, it is among the most current and technically sophisticated treatments of the subject available.