Foreign Information Manipulation & Interference (FIMI) is a strategic, coordinated and intentional pattern of behavior that seeks to impact the values, political processes or institutions of another country. The concept and acronym were coined by the European External Action Service (EEAS).

Unlike other analyses that focus on the content of the information disseminated — like fact-checking — FIMI’s analysis focuses on behavioral patterns and operational methods; on how something is said and who is spreading it.

For an activity to be classified as FIMI, it must meet four criteria:

• It must involve foreign actors: without evidence of foreign participation, there can be no talk of FIMI. 
• It must employ manipulative behavior, i. e., use different tactics and techniques to distort public discourse or deceive the audience.
• It must be intentional: the action must be deliberate and have a clear purpose. Sharing false information without knowing it is false does not count. 
• It must be coordinated: these are not isolated events, but a structured campaign.

For example, a user sharing or liking a post without knowing it is part of a coordinated campaign is not engaging in FIMI. An isolated event, without verifiable links to a foreign power, does not enter this category either.

Does FIMI Always Involve Disinformation?

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Not necessarily. FIMI and disinformation overlap, but they are not the same thing. Disinformation can be a tool within a FIMI campaign, but it is not a requirement. Likewise, not all disinformation out there is FIMI; much of the disinformation has no element of foreign manipulation.

TTPS: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures

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FIMI is usually described as harmful, but legal. Usually, these operations exploit legal gaps without constituting a crime, although in some cases they do involve illegal activities. Bad information is an example of it: real information (personal data, e-mails, classified documents) spread with the intention of creating harm. This type of operation usually comes after a hacking or cyberespionage, which are illegal activities in themselves, where information is extracted that is then used during the influence campaign.

A common technique to manipulate information is through identity theft: cloning or falsifying sites of legitimate media outlets to give credibility to a message. The content may not be strictly false, but the source is. A more sophisticated approach involves creating entirely new “alternative” media outlets that appear professional and independent but are centrally coordinated.

Artificial amplification is the technique designed to guarantee that certain content achieves significantly greater exposure than it would through organic means. To accomplish this, the key mechanism is the manipulation of recommendation algorithms; if a platform’s system detects that a piece of content is generating a lot of activity, it prioritizes it and distributes it to more users. There are multiple tools to carry this out. One of the main ones is through fake social media accounts, burner profiles and automatized bots that simulate real activity and generate the number of interactions required to mislead the algorithm (inauthentic behavior). By raising interactions with these techniques, they have a broader reach. Then there is also paid advertisement, which distributes content on a mass scale without relying on organic behaviors, and hiring real influencers with a broad reach to replicate a coordinated narrative.The result is a deliberate saturation of information channels. One of the consequences of such saturation is that they can create volume on such a large scale that journalists and fact-checkers can’t debunk everything on time. Amidst that artificial noise, legitimate or critical voices lose visibility and are unable to stand out from the sea of fabricated content.

What Are the Objectives?

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There are numerous motivations behind a FIMI campaign. Some lead to eroding trust in democratic institutions or interfering in election processes. Others seek to undermine public support for a country at war or to discredit specific political figures. In some cases, the goal is to drown out dissenting voices with a flood of fabricated or manipulative content. Many of these goals are usually combined within the same campaign.

Conclusion

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Analyzing whether there is Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference requires shifting the focus from the content to the behavior: who is behind it, how they operate and whether there is verifiable coordination with foreign actors. Without solid proof of all four requirements, the risk is double: to accuse what may be domestic disinformation of foreign interference or ignoring sophisticated operations because of its content, seen in isolation, does not seem very risky.

Bibliography and Resources

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