Weaponisation of social media in Nigeria’s armed conflicts: cognitive warfare and its implications for the law of armed conflict

Contemporary armed conflicts increasingly extend into cognitive and digital domains, where social media platforms are strategically used to influence perception, behaviour, and the informational environment of hostilities. Although propaganda and information operations have historically accompanied warfare, the scale, speed, and algorithmic amplification enabled by social media create new regulatory challenges. Using Nigeria’s non-international armed conflicts as an illustrative case study, this article examines the weaponisation of social media and its implications for the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). Adopting a qualitative doctrinal and socio-legal methodology, the analysis applies an integrated framework combining Just War Theory, LOAC principles, cognitive warfare, and an effects-based approach to civilian harm. It argues that social media-driven influence operations frequently fall below the legal threshold of an ‘attack’ despite producing significant humanitarian consequences. These harms are often cumulative, diffuse, and non-kinetic, challenging legal frameworks traditionally centred on physical destruction. The article further identifies difficulties relating to proportionality, attribution, and accountability, concluding that LOAC requires contextual interpretation to address emerging forms of harm caused by the manipulation of information, perception, and cognition.