Information warfare refers to considerations about how the distribution, restriction and transmission of information interacts with other processes on the battlefield. It is difficult to theoretically and semantically disentangle from military use-cases because of inherent overlap with 'intelligence' and other proximate concepts. Furthermore, all militaries of the post-WW2 paradigm rely on the organisation of information on force-deployment the first order of business in any imminent confrontation. All warfare draws on organisation of information as the primary force-multiplier of the digital age, but "information warfare" refers to the weaponisation of information as such.
Information warfare thus colloquially refers to practices in which information is used and conceptualised as the weapon itself. The process of weaponisation in the civilian sphere is the construction of a society-wide narrative framework in which "neutral" information can be presented as consistent with an (ideally unacknowledged) propagandistic agenda. In a context where real shots have been fired, leaks of raw information on troop composition and location are the primary ("pure") form of information warfare since it is information whose very public accessibility constitutes a freely available advantage for the enemy to improve their target-accquisition rate.