Information and Psychological Operations (IPSO) as a Discovery of False Narratives in the Conditions of Military Conflict in the Med

Abstract

The article examines the information and psychological operations (IPSO) promoted by Russia in the media space through social networks and traditional mass media since February 24, 2022. The scientific analysis includes the advice of media experts, practicing journalists, fact-checkers, and military psychologists on countering various manifestations of the IPSO, and through them, false narratives in the conditions of information warfare. The material was selected by the method of continuous examination of social networks Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, as well as such anti-fake resources and fact-checking projects as NotaYenota, “Brekhunetz”, “Media Detector”, “BezBrekhni”, “Filtr”, “Russian fake, go to...”, media research of the public organization “Information in Its Pure Form”. First of all, the modern media space was examined in order to identify in it the IPSO conducted by Russia in the conditions of the information warfare. It was noted that the activation of the IPSO with the start of a full-scale invasion took place instantly, because the enemy took advantage of the information vacuum in which the Ukrainians fell in the first days of the war due to a lack of understanding of what was happening. The characteristics of typical signs of hostile IPSOs are given, in particular the following: the presence of a bot author or Internet troll; formation of mass despair; patriotic symbols or slogans as an element of cover; intentional division of Ukrainians into “us” and “them”; creating a deceptive effect about the extraordinary power of the enemy; reconnaissance of data that may be useful to the enemy; the use of esotericism; an anti-moral call for the cruelest revenge; excessive emotionality of the texts and call to action; appeal to the individual as a persuasive argument; demanding a quick response to messages; devaluation of official sources of information and involvement of pseudo-experts; discrediting Ukraine in the international arena. It was found that the synchronicity of publications, as well as factual, logical, language errors, and the unreality of the so- called authors of such material are also markers of IPSO. The differentiation of the most common types of IPSO and their transformation in Ukrainian domestic media were studied, along with effective ways of resisting false Russian narratives, forming critical thinking and media literacy when perceiving heterogeneous information content.