A Diamond is an Analysts Best Friend Introducing the Diamond Model for Influence Operations Analysis

Defining Influence Operations

Recorded Future analyst Charity Wright opens a TLP:WHITE session distinguishing misinformation, disinformation, and fake news. Influence operations are organized attempts to change target-audience beliefs and decisions, often through propaganda and mass manipulation rather than kinetic effects alone.

Limits of Existing Frameworks

Prior analysis focused on content, voice, and dissemination but missed relationships among narratives, actors, and infrastructure. Kill chains like MITRE's disinformation chain and the AMITT TTP catalog help map adversary process yet lack psychosocial and geopolitical nuance, and new platforms outpace static TTP lists.

Narrative as the Core

Wright stresses that every campaign centers on a story. Humans assign meaning through narrative, especially stories invoking shared identity. Narrative warfare weaponizes those meanings to change behavior, an element often lost in technically focused CTI tradecraft.

The Adapted Diamond Model

Building on the 2013 intrusion Diamond Model, Wright's influence variant places narrative at the center. Technical axes retain capabilities and infrastructure; socio-political axes rename adversary to influencer and victim to audience, fusing essential campaign components for daily analysis of complex psychosocial threats.