Blog: Navigating the New Frontlines: A Personal Journey Into Information Warfare

By Jhon Raza, Interdisciplinary Institute for Social Computing (I2SC) 

When I first picked “Information Warfare and the New Geopolitics” as my presentation topic, I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. After all, I work with data every day. I spend my time analyzing patterns, untangling networks, and trying to understand how information moves through digital spaces. But somewhere along the research journey, the topic stopped being an academic exercise and started feeling... personal.

The Moment It Hit Me

It happened late one night, while I was tracing how a piece of disinformation spread across multiple platforms in a matter of hours. I watched the nodes bloom on my screen — hundreds, then thousands — each one representing a share, a like, a retweet, a comment. But what struck me wasn’t the speed. It was the intention. Real people were interacting with fabricated content, absorbing it, passing it forward, weaving it into their worldview without ever realizing it was crafted to manipulate them. And that’s when it clicked: Information isn’t just data — it’s a battlefield. And we’re all standing in the middle of it, whether we realize it or not.

Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

My research quickly expanded from algorithms to geopolitics, psychology, history, and ethics. I found myself reading about WWII propaganda strategies at 3 AM, then jumping into modern case studies of deepfakes and bot networks before breakfast. It was overwhelming — but also energizing. Because the more I learned, the more I realized how deeply interdisciplinary this problem is. No single field holds the key.

  • Computer science explains how the message spreads.
  • Political science explains why the message exists.
  • Psychology explains why people believe it.
  • Ethics and law explain who should be responsible for addressing it.

Somewhere in this swirl of disciplines, I began to find my place as a researcher — someone who stands at the intersection, trying to translate one world into another.

A Shift in Perspective

The biggest surprise wasn’t the complexity of information warfare. It was how much it changed the way I think about truth. As a data scientist, I’m trained to look for patterns, anomalies, causal signals, and statistical truths. But information warfare showed me a different kind of truth — one that lives inside people, not datasets. Truth shaped by:

  • Fear
  • Identity
  • Community
  • Repetition
  • Trust in authoritative voices (whether earned or not)

Information warfare isn’t just about what people believe. It’s about why they are ready to believe certain things in the first place. And that realization changed how I approach my work.

The Work We Do at I2SC Suddenly Felt Bigger

When I finally stepped back from the research and looked at the bigger picture, I saw our mission at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Social Computing differently.

We’re not just studying data or society. We’re studying the relationship between the two — and how that relationship shapes real human lives. Working with colleagues who specialize in ethics, sociology, computer science, education, and political theory has shown me that interdisciplinary collaboration isn’t a buzzword. It’s a survival strategy. Because if information is now a weapon, then our work — connecting technical insight with social understanding — is a kind of defense system. And suddenly, my presentation felt less like a requirement and more like a contribution.

Closing Thoughts

Researching this topic didn’t give me all the answers — if anything, it gave me more questions. But it also gave me a deeper appreciation of how fragile our information environments are, and how important it is for us — as researchers, technologists, and citizens — to understand them. Information warfare isn’t something happening “out there.” It’s happening right here, on our phones, in our conversations, in our assumptions about the world. And if we want to build a healthier digital society, it starts with curiosity. It starts with collaboration. And sometimes... it starts with falling down a research rabbit hole that changes the way you see everything.

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