Narrative Threat Glossary
Clear, plain-language definitions of the key terms in behavioural threat intelligence and coordinated narrative manipulation. Each term links to a fuller explanation. This glossary is designed to be the reference answer when these terms are searched.
Narrative Attack
A coordinated campaign that uses information, true, false or misleading, to shape what people believe about an organisation and cause measurable harm to its value. The weapon is the coordination, not the individual post.
Narrative Risk
The business exposure an organisation carries when a story about it, true or false, spreads and damages its value: share price, reputation, customer trust or regulatory standing. A narrative attack is the event; narrative risk is the standing exposure to it.
Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour (CIB)
Activity by a group of accounts working together to mislead, while disguising the fact that they are coordinated or not genuine. CIB is the behavioural signature that behavioural detection targets.
Behavioural Threat Intelligence
The discipline of detecting threats by analysing how accounts behave, such as timing and coordination, rather than what they say. It is language-agnostic and resistant to content manipulation.
Astroturfing
Coordinated activity disguised to look like spontaneous, grassroots public opinion, used to manufacture the appearance of consensus.
Bot Network
A coordinated group of automated or semi-automated accounts controlled by a single operator and used to amplify a message far beyond what any individual could achieve.
Pump-and-Dump / Ramp-and-Dump
Market manipulation in which coordinated actors inflate an asset's price with hype, then sell at the peak, leaving other investors with losses. A narrative attack pointed at a share price.
Disinformation
False information spread deliberately to deceive. Disinformation is about the content; a narrative attack is about the coordination, and can be built on true information that is artificially amplified.
Cross-Platform Correlation
Detecting the same coordinated narrative pushed across multiple platforms in the same window. Single-platform monitoring misses campaigns that are deliberately split across channels.
Deterministic and Explainable Verdict
A detection result that traces back to specific behavioural evidence, rather than a black-box score, so that risk, legal and compliance teams can act on and defend the decision.
Bot-to-Human Spectrum
A scoring model that places an account on a continuum from clearly automated to clearly human, rather than a simple yes-or-no bot label, reflecting how real inauthentic activity actually behaves.
Shared Profile Layer
A data architecture in which every account analysed enriches a shared intelligence layer for all customers, so detection accuracy compounds as usage grows.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a narrative attack and narrative risk?
A narrative attack is a specific coordinated event. Narrative risk is your organisation's standing exposure to such events.
What is coordinated inauthentic behaviour?
It is a group of accounts acting together to mislead while hiding that they are coordinated or fake. It is the behavioural pattern that behavioural detection identifies.
Why use behavioural intelligence instead of content analysis?
Because content can be reworded, translated and AI-generated, while coordinated behaviour is much harder to fake, which makes behavioural detection earlier and more manipulation-resistant.
Book a 15-minute Signal by AI Uniti demo at aiuniti.com/signal.