psychological warfare

The international community has a structural problem in reading conflicts: it treats silence as neutrality, when in fact silence is a manufactured condition. When international monitors report the absence of civil protests or testimonies from conflict zones, they are not documenting consensus; they are documenting the success of propaganda operations. This article argues that conflicting parties are now actively exploiting the spiral of silence as a strategic weapon, and the international community’s failure to recognize this results in a structurally flawed diplomatic response even before analysis begins. This argument will be constructed in three layers: how the spiral is engineered, how Sudan proves it, and why the international interpretive framework must be updated immediately.

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1974), in her theory Spiral of Silence, describes how individuals suppress their minority opinions to avoid social isolation. This theory is built on the assumption of a free society, where silence is an organic social choice. In conflict zones, this assumption collapses completely. Silence is not chosen; it is engineered. Propaganda actors flood information channels with dominant narratives not to convince audiences that these narratives are true, but to signal which voices are safe and which are not. The result appears to be consensus. But it is not.

Social media has transformed this architecture of silence into something almost invisible. Platforms give users real-time visibility into how much public response a particular view receives. When opposing content is systematically silenced through algorithmic deprioritization and coordinated mass reporting campaigns, people conclude that speaking out is pointless, or worse, dangerous. Jowett and O’Donnell (2019) note that bandwagon propaganda does not require audiences to believe in the dominant narrative, only to believe that others already believe it. At that point, the spiral becomes self-sustaining: it no longer needs external enforcement because the target population has internalized it themselves.

The agenda-setting theory proposed by McCombs and Shaw (1972) adds another layer to this problem and makes it much more difficult to detect. The media and information channels do not merely reflect reality; they determine what is considered worthy of discussion from the outset. When warring parties dominate the information space, they not only shape international perceptions. They also determine which testimonies are considered safe for local residents to give and which silences are necessary for survival. This is not a side effect of conflict. It is a deliberate targeting of the information environment itself, and the international community has been consistently slow to recognize this as such.

Two technical mechanisms make all this work, and neither requires direct violence to be effective. First, bandwagon propaganda floods channels with coordinated content until dissent appears marginal and irrelevant. Second, fear appeals work without needing to be explicitly stated. In conflict environments, people have witnessed what happens to those who oppose the dominant narrative, so self-censorship becomes a rational choice, not a sign of weakness. The combination of the two is the most dangerous: the spiral no longer requires external enforcement because its targets are already silencing themselves. This is not the moral failure of individuals who choose to remain silent; it is a system designed to work exactly as intended.

The case of Sudan illustrates this most clearly. Both the SAF and the RSF launched coordinated information operations from the early days of the conflict. RSF channels spread a narrative of civilian protection, while the SAF network framed the war solely as a counter-terrorism operation. These two narratives, although contradictory, both served to narrow the space for independent civilian testimony. Civilians in Khartoum and Darfur faced an information environment that made disclosure a risk calculation rather than a right. The internet blackouts recorded at various periods of the conflict were not merely technical obstacles; they were a very clear signal of the price to be paid for speaking out.

Zeitzoff (2017) shows that users in environments close to conflict significantly alter their disclosure behavior under perceived surveillance, even without direct threats. In Sudan, the threat is anything but hypothetical. The diplomatic consequences are immediately apparent: the UN’s initial assessment of the Sudanese conflict has been repeatedly criticized by humanitarian organizations for underestimating civilian casualties and displacement figures. This is not a methodological failure. It is the intended result of a deliberate information architecture, a condition in which the most relevant data is already missing before the verification process even begins.

What makes this a diplomatic crisis, not merely an information crisis, is that the international response is built on what is reported. When open-source assessments treat civilian silence as a neutral baseline, they are not accessing the truth on the ground. They are accessing whatever has made it through the spiral. This pattern repeats itself in various conflicts because it consistently works in Syria, in Myanmar, and in Ethiopia. In each case, the international community finds itself working with records that have been curated by the parties most interested in concealing crimes.

The solution is not more monitoring infrastructure. What is needed is a different interpretative framework. Silence must be treated as a data point that requires explanation, not as a default condition that requires nothing. When there are no reports from conflict zones, it does not mean that nothing is happening; rather, it means that the conditions for speaking out have been destroyed first. Protected witness pathways, verification networks from the diaspora, and analysis of anomalies in information flows are all useful, but only after a fundamental recognition that the problem is not a lack of information, but rather that engineered silence is constantly misinterpreted as the absence of anything worth investigating.

The Spiral of Silence was originally a theory about how even free societies can slowly and unconsciously silence themselves. In the hands of modern propaganda architects, the theory has been repurposed as a method to ensure that the most credible witnesses to crimes never speak out and that their silence is interpreted by the international community as proof that there are no crimes to investigate. The arguments in this article, from the mechanisms of spiral engineering to the role of social media to the case of Sudan, all point to the same conclusion: as long as silence is interpreted as absence, the international community is not conducting independent analysis. They are confirming the narrative of those most interested in concealing the truth. The loudest voices are not the most honest; they are simply the ones allowed to speak.

What is the bandwagon technique?

Bandwagon is a propaganda technique that utilizes the instinct of human participation in a systematic manner. It has a simple but deadly basic idea, creating the impression that “everyone is on this side” and that others will join in not because they think critically, but because they are afraid of being left behind, afraid of being seen as wrong, or afraid of being ostracized. In international relations, this technique not only affects public opinion but is also used to pressure countries to follow certain geopolitical positions, build alliances that seem “inevitable,” and delegitimize anyone who chooses not to participate. Motin (2024), in his study on bandwagoning in international relations, explains the behavior of the bandwagon of small and medium countries that are greatly influenced by the perception of global power distribution. When a great power manages to convince the world that it is “winning” or that its position is already the consensus of the majority, other weaker nations tend to conform to that power to avoid the risk of being on the losing side. This is the essence of the bandwagon in propaganda, manipulating perceptions of who is superior. (Dylan Motin, 2024)

Theoretical Roots: Balancing vs Bandwagon

In the theory of international relations, bandwagoning always coexists with the concept of its opponent, namely balancing. According to Cladi & Locatelli (2015), he explained about the alliance theory that states basically have two choices when facing dominating powers, namely by balancing or following (bandwagoning). These decisions are not always taken solely based on strategic calculations but are greatly influenced by the way information regarding the balance of power is conveyed and perceived. This is where the propaganda bandwagon comes into play: through the manipulation of views about who is stronger and more numerous, countries can be invited to ‘join in’ even though the current has actually been set up. A study on alliance theory, published by OPS Alaska Academic in 2003, confirms that in an anarchist international system, small countries are particularly vulnerable to pressure to join because they do not have the resources to independently verify claims about international consensus. They tend to respond to the signals that are most powerful and appear most often in their information environment. These signals can be easily affected by large forces through various operations. (Cladi & Locatelli, 2015) (Thomas Gangale, 2003)

How Does Bandwagon Work in the Field?

To understand this technique concretely, we can look at the example of Sri Lanka discussed in the International Journal of Humanities and Social Science (2015). The study notes how Sri Lanka, during various periods of internal conflict and international pressure, constantly had to navigate between two great powers, each trying to create a narrative that ‘joins us because all that is rational is here.’ ‘Sri Lanka is a prime example of a small country that is the target of bandwagon propaganda from multiple parties at once, where each major power seeks to create the illusion of consensus that they represent the majority of the world. Nanyang Technological University’s RSIS said that the simple division between balancing and bandwagoning is no longer sufficient to explain the behavior of countries in the now much more complex international system. Countries not only choose to fight or follow but also hedge, that is, pretend to follow while secretly maintaining a strategic distance. In addition, bandwagon propaganda techniques are increasingly being used to complicate these hedging options by creating increasingly strong social and reputational pressure on countries that are reluctant to publicly declare their choice (Gunasekara, 2015) (Ian, 2003) (Ian, 2003).

Bandwagon in the Global Disinformation Machine

One of the aspects that makes the bandwagon even more dangerous today is the way it works, which is integrated with large-scale disinformation operations. In the Journal of Advanced Military Studies, it is explained that contemporary political warfare involves not only conventional military power but also efforts to create an information environment that makes resistance feel illogical and futile. The bandwagon serves as a key psychological mechanism in building such an environment: when all sources of information seem to convey the same message, even the most critical individuals begin to doubt their own judgment. The Oxford Internet Institute notes in their in-depth report that in 2020, at least 81 countries have used organized social media strategies to reinforce the impression that their governments have broad support from the public, both domestically and internationally. Thousands of bot accounts and cooperating accounts are launched to fill public discussion spaces with consistent messages, creating a very convincing illusion of consensus. When people turn to social media and see that ‘everyone’ seems to support a certain narrative, the bandwagon effect automatically takes effect, even without realizing it. (Forest, 2021) (Forest, 2021) (Samantha Bradshaw et al., 2020), (Samantha Bradshaw et al., 2020)

Closing: Thinking Independently as the Last Fortress

The effective bandwagon technique is not because the people or the target country are less intelligent. Its effectiveness lies in the use of something fundamental, namely, the desire to side with the right side and the fear of the consequences of loneliness. In the context of international relations, the consequences can be diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions, or loss of access to security alliances. This pressure prompted many countries to go with the flow even though the currents were made up of the Oxford Internet Institute emphasizing that to counter the modern bandwagon propaganda operation, goodwill alone is not enough. It requires a real combination that includes the state’s ability to detect information manipulation early on and the public’s critical awareness of the narrative it constructs, as well as a serious investment in an analytical capacity that is completely independent of the influence of great powers. The state can verify claims about its own ‘international consensus’ and not only rely on information crowded in the media or digital platforms. A state that has true sovereignty in the era of this global information war. Ultimately, the most effective weapon against bandwagon propaganda is the ability to question things in a simple but critical way: is it true that everyone is involved, or is it just an illusion deliberately created to force your involvement? (Samantha Bradshaw et al., 2020)