Journalists and IT specialists should join the UK’s reserve forces to help the counter fake news and cyber-propaganda, the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, has said.

Williamson said the armed forces needed more specialists with skills in “getting messages across” and said the army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force needed to do more to entice tech-literate and communications professionals to consider careers in the forces.

In an interview with The House magazine to be published later this week, Williamson said the armed forces needed skills that could be used to combat propaganda on social media.

He said army recruitment should be about “looking to different people who maybe think, as a journalist: ‘What are my skills in terms of how are they relevant to the armed forces?’

“They are more relevant today than anything else, having those skills, whether it be journalists, those people with amazing cyber and IT skills, those people with the ability to really understand about getting messages across.”

Williamson said warfare was evolving rapidly and needed a new approach for the next generation. “We have to start changing the armed forces in terms of actually attracting those people as well.

“Sometimes people see the armed forces as being quite traditional in terms of its approach. But in this disinformation age, this cyber-age – people often look at cyber as something that’s separate. Actually, it’s completely relevant to every other different part of our services.”

Williamson has previously spoken about the threat Russian disinformation poses to the UK, saying after the Salisbury chemical attack that the Kremlin should “go away and shut up”.

He later revealed that his “undiplomatic language” had earned him a ticking off from Downing Street.

He compared the tactics used by Russian internet trolls to Nazi propaganda, saying last month that it “completely distorts the narrative of what people think about things … effectively the Lord Haw-Haws of the modern era”.