Creating content for social media training in Somulator

The social media training tool Somulator was launched by the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) in 2022. The purpose of this tool is to provide a safe environment to use different forms of common online services, such as video sharing sites or news sites. The primary use is to train staff in armed forces and emergency services as well as local and national government on how the unwanted spread of malign influence, disinformation and misinformation can affect their work in a crisis. This report is meant to help organisers create better and more appropriate content without requiring a lot of effort. This report thus extends the original Somulator report that provides an overview of Somulator usage. Based on feedback and observations of Somulator use, the key issue for successful training seems to be content that a) reflects real life information manipulation and b) is relevant to the participants in the training situation. The underlying benefit of this is that it provides more realism, which in turn improves the learning outcomes for participants. Since Somulator was launched, it has been used by a wide range of civilian and military actors in Norway and abroad, for research, training, and large-scale emergency exercises. Somulator provides four clones of known social media platforms as well as online news sites. Its key components are the Excon tools, which allow a single user to control the social media clones in terms of access and content.