INFO-FOM
Why an INFO-FOM?
Traditional FOMs such as RPR-FOM or the NETN suite provide strong foundations for interoperability in distributed simulation. However, they are limited when it comes to representing the information environment - the interplay of narratives, audiences, memory, and influence.
Conducttr has developed an INFO-FOM draft to fill this gap. It enables simulations to model:
Narratives and symbols (the building blocks of influence)
Audience states (attitudes, beliefs, dispositions, morale)
Memory and salience (what information persists, what fades)
Information events (disinformation, media amplification, symbolic acts)
This makes INFO-FOM a bridge between cognitive modelling and HLA Evolved interoperability, allowing information effects to be represented alongside kinetic and cyber effects.
Relationship to Existing Standards
INFO-FOM is designed to be complementary:
Extends NETN-BASE with focus on audience and narrative.
Scope
The INFO-FOM draft introduces extensions in three main areas:
Audience and Actor State Representation
Narratives, Events, and Collective Action
Injects and Scenario Control
1. Audience and Actor State Representation
The module defines both static descriptors (identity, affiliation, role) and dynamic state attributes (morale, disposition, emotional state, memory, beliefs, attitudes) for Audiences (population groups) and Actors (individuals).
AudienceState includes morale, disposition level, emotional state, participation rate, belief and attitude structures, and symbolic memory traces.
ActorState mirrors this at the individual level, enabling fine-grained modelling of key personas or leaders.
Both use JSON-encoded fields to flexibly capture belief systems, attitudes, and memory states, while maintaining interoperability through HLA standard datatypes.
This allows federates to track how populations perceive, remember, and respond to narrative events in real time.
2. Narratives, Events, and Collective Action
The module defines a dedicated class of narrative-driven interactions:
NarrativeEvent: Represents messages, media broadcasts, symbolic acts, or zone triggers that may shift audience or actor states. Each event carries metadata such as origin, channel, emotional energy, and target audience.
Event: Provides an objective, factual record of occurrences, separate from narrative framing, ensuring traceability between injects and state updates.
CollectiveAction: Captures group behaviours (e.g., demonstrations, online campaigns, symbolic protests) and links them back to participating audiences.
This makes it possible to simulate not only information injects, but also their observable consequences in terms of population behaviour.
3. Injects and Scenario Control
To support experimentation and training, the FOM defines inject interactions that can alter state directly:
AudienceStateInject and ActorStateInject allow other platforms to directly modify morale, beliefs, attitudes, or memory.
ScenarioInject provides inject for pre-planned event lists (MEL/MIL) allows start, pause, resume, stop, reset.
InjectResult is an optional feedback mechanism to confirm inject has been received (suitable for debugging).
This allows more direct control over audience & activity activity.
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Next Steps
We are sharing this draft to:
Invite feedback from the defence simulation and IO/StratCom community.
Encourage partners and clients to consider how cognitive and narrative effects can be simulated in HLA federations.
If you’d like to discuss the INFO-FOM draft, please contact us at [email protected]
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