Connecting Disinformation and Cybersecurity: An Interview-Based Exploration of Practice and Research Perspectives

Abstract

This study examines how experts conceptualize the relationship between disinformation and cybersecurity and how these perceptions evolve when confronted with concrete cases and mechanisms. Building on recent efforts to frame disinformation within security and cyber intelligence approaches, we conduct semi-structured expert interviews to capture multidisciplinary viewpoints on an emerging and conceptually fragmented field. Eight informants—equally split between professional and academic domains—include fact-checkers, journalists, military and policy practitioners, and scholars in communication, law, propaganda studies, and cybersecurity. The interview protocol explores whether respondents perceive a disinformation–cybersecurity link and how they characterize its nature (structural vs. circumstantial) and proximity (direct vs. indirect), elicits campaigns with potential national security implications, probes the scope of “disinformation wars,” assesses the role of artificial intelligence as both amplifier and countermeasure, examines perceived overlaps between cybercrime and disinformation actors, and gathers mitigation strategies. Findings indicate broad agreement that a link exists but divergence in how it is defined: most participants initially describe it as circumstantial, whereas security-oriented profiles more often treat it as structural and direct. As interviews progress, positions tend to converge and latent connections surface, revealing disciplinary biases and occasional inconsistencies, particularly among those equating cybersecurity primarily with cybercrime or foregrounding freedom-of-expression risks. Across profiles, AI is widely viewed as accelerating targeting, content generation, and dissemination, while also enabling improved detection and assessment. Proposed responses emphasize education and resilience-building, detection, and institutional measures, underscoring the need for shared concepts and interdisciplinarity to support coherent analysis and mitigation of disinformation as a cybersecurity-relevant threat.