INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES IN POLITICAL PROPAGANDA: THE CASE OF THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN INFORMATION WAR (2014–2022)

The article analyzes the shift in 2014 of the Russian Federation to the policy of covert military intervention in Ukraine, which was accompanied by the strengthening of information influence.It was exerted both on the population of Russia, as it was increasingly seen as a mobilization resource, and in the former Soviet republics, primarily Ukraine.The publication argues that during this period a digital propaganda system was made purposefully and with the involvement of significant and versatile resources.It was extremely similar to the classical model typical for totalitarian society, as it performed the same functions in the virtual world: "digital censorship and repressions" ("trolling"), "digital iron curtain" ("filter bubble"), etc.The model of creation and behavior of such a digital propaganda system was reconstructed.The author calls the most successful tool a combination of methods of influence: creation of a large sector of Russian-language propaganda content on the Internet; filling it with propaganda templates, Russian "newspeak" phrases, fakes in order to reduce attention; opening "trolling farms" that perform the function of moderating "public opinion", implementing "digital censorship" and "repression", as well as sending messages with links to propaganda content; artificially drawing people through the effect of a "filtering bubble" into the bubble with propaganda information, isolating the user through this effect from other sources of information (i.e., creating a "digital iron curtain"); using people who were influenced to further broadcast propaganda templates offline.Russian-language content was identified as the main limitation of this method, and increased visualization of propaganda to attract young people was predicted.