VERBAL AND INFORMATION-PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT IN THE POST-TRUTH ERA

The article is devoted to the characterization of the modern system of mass communication and its influencing potential on the mass addressee in the post-truth era. The author considers speech impact in the sphere of mass media as part of a more complex and technically advanced phenomenon of information-psychological impact, which provides for the use by the communicator not only of linguistic means, but also various techniques of audio-visualization. The main forms of information-psychological influence (persuasion and suggestion), which complement each other in the course of communication and are manifested in different types of information, are distinguished. On the basis of synchronic-diachronic, descriptive and functional methods, the author concludes that the system of indirect communicative influence on human thinking and actions forms a universal multilevel patterns matrix of constructing autonomous hyperreality in media space. This system is a consequence and at the same time the root cause of the emergence of the phenomenon of post-truth as a result of the improvement of communication media. The results of the study allow to conclude that the closest type of information to the reflection of objective reality is factual information, because at the level of a single fact the possibility of subjective-evaluative interpretation of an event excludes. At the same time, the communicator’s orientation (towards informing or misinforming) is determined by the system of his basic values of upbringing, education and culture, which in its turn determines the presence of political will and the nature of coverage of what is happening. The issues of social management and building a picture of the world in individual and mass consciousness are reduced to the figures, characteristics, other circumstances of an event, which form the basis of the message and through which the struggle between Truth and post-truth (lies) is conducted in the information space.