Moscow youth leaders to get training in information warfare

Members of Moscow's Youth Parliament will take classes on information warfare, according to the news agency Moskva. The city's youth deputies are invited to attend a forum scheduled for 2016, where they will hear "no less than 24 hours of academic lectures" on politics, election campaigning, and social networks. The forum is being organized by the Moscow Center for Youth Parliamentarism.

Organizers also plan to hold a training seminar on "information threats," covering issues including "information war as a replacement for real war, "applications and examples from history," "methods of emotional pressure on Internet audiences," and "collectively targeted attacks on social networks." Reportedly, there are also plans to introduce the study of techniques for leaking and planting stories in online media and using the Web to manage public relations and so-called "anti-public relations."

The official purpose of the forum to raise the electoral activism of Moscow's young people. The forum's final program is still in development, according to Alexey Demikhov, the director of the Moscow Center for Youth Parliamentarism.