Ben O'Loughlin will speak this week at the Riga Stratcom Dialogue: Perception Matters, held on August 20th-21st in Riga, Latvia. He will discuss a project led by the Latvian Institute of International Affairs called 'Social Media as a weapon in the context of hybrid warfare'. In particular, Ben will discuss NATO members' efforts to identify and counter Russia's 'troll army' in the ongoing contest for public opinion in the region. Ben's work on global media events and Latvia's strategic communication researchers have both identified 'hybrid trolling' as an important feature of today's communication environment, but it may be that they draw very different conclusions from their studies.

Other speakers include the President of Latvia, Raimonds Vējonis, and the Prime Minister, Laimdota Straujuma, NATO's Deputy Assistant Secretary General James Appathurai, former BBC World presenter Nik Gowing, and numerous military policymakers in the area of strategic communications.