Political manipulation and manipulative techniques in modern Ukrainian society

Myroslava Zelenska
Sep 6, 2018 · 5 min read

Fake news is announced. Real news is leaked.

Since independence, significant changes have taken place in Ukraine that have affected all the components of our country’s functioning, including its political system. Society faces new political phenomena, both positive and negative. An example of such new processes is the practice of negative manipulative influence on public opinion. Manipulating the freedom of people’s will is an urgent problem, as it has a great influence on the further development of the state and its management.
Analysing contemporary political phenomena, most researchers conclude that manipulative technologies and their distribution has become the main problem of research and functioning of political life.

Surveys conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 1994–2005 show that most citizens are confident that politicians are concerned only with their own welfare without paying attention to social problems. In such a situation, manipulation with the social and mass consciousness becomes extremely important, because it is through manipulation those types of scenarios can be realised. The main task of political manipulation is to give the masses the illusion of participation in the management of society, control over politicians and the elite.

It should be noted that thorough research on the problem of political manipulation was initiated at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the main aim of the scientists was to search for a means to create within the society an illusory state of the “unconscious crowd” that would allow the successful management of a manipulated society. In modern political science, several areas of study of the problem can be singled out: the psychological school — Brown, Lebon, Moskovichi, Gudin, the sociological school — Aronson, Packard, political science — Kara-Murza, Tsuladze, political linguistics — Batsevych, Hronska.

Manipulation requires special flexibility in strategies, however, has a number of significant advantages over power and economic methods of domination, management and control, as it is carried out indiscriminately for objects of manipulation, usually does not require significant material costs, and does not entail direct losses and casualties.

In scientific literature, political manipulation is seen as a system of means of ideological, spiritual and psychological influence on the mass consciousness in order to impose certain ideas and values; purposeful influence on public opinion and political behavior in order to direct them in a given way. In the Great Oxford Dictionary, political manipulation is defined as a profitable and insidious influence on people in order to achieve personal gain by the media.

For the technology of general social manipulation, there are certain social myths which are interpreted in the public consciousness by means of the following methods of manipulation: 1) lie — direct explicit manipulation of facts and the spread of false, false information; 2) silence — blocking true information about the activities of a particular subject of policy, events, etc.; 3) half truth — the dissemination of information that objectively and thoroughly covers minor details and at the same time silences important facts and/or misrepresents events; 4) introduction of images and cliche — rooting into the public consciousness the stereotypes desired for the ruling elite in relation to certain subjects of politics, ideological doctrines, individual events and facts; 5) hanging labels — unsubstantiated imposition of negative evaluation in terms of most categories with the aim of compromising of certain political subjects. However, consideration of manipulation as a completely negative phenomenon is biased. It is believed that manipulation can be a positive phenomenon. A. Tsuladze writes about this: “Manipulations are necessary and useful, but where is the limit on which the useful action of manipulative activity ends?”. Of course, manipulation in the name of justice is theoretically possible, but its implementation at the current level of political culture is very questionable.

The words of the famous political scientist V. Polokhalo testify to the fact that in the Ukrainian society the atmosphere for manipulation is favorable: “Manipulating the consciousness (in the general sense of the concept) in the context of the consequences and risks of financial globalization becomes the norm for a part of the Ukrainian political system.”

In such a situation, the question of existing remedies against various kinds of manipulative actions will inevitably arise. The socio-psychological literature offers many different means of protection against manipulations. The proposed typology of E. Dotsenko seems to us the most successful. First of all, you need to try to keep distance with the aggressor, in the active form— escape, retreat; or passive form — exile, destruction of an aggressor. If the distance was not kept, control the nature of the impact, such as setting obstacles: the barrier, seeking shelter, or using counter-measures: control of the aggressor, subordination and management. In the case of contact with the aggressor, one needs to mask, freeze, or at least ignore or deny the threat itself. But the protection of the object of manipulation, according to this classification, is possible only if they are aware of the manipulation itself. The essence of the manipulation is, as we are now sure, in concealment.

Sources of political influence use the specific psychological and technological methods of influencing the political consciousness of citizens and, accordingly, require the use of legislative and state-legal and state-political means of limiting their negative influence, which do not allow to completely transform the free choice of citizens into a formal act.

As Osika G.O notes, the main means of significantly limiting the manipulative capabilities of electronic sources of political influence are: 1. Development of pluralism of information space and freedom of choice of information sources; 2. Strengthening of democratic political convictions of the population with the help of purposeful, honest ideological and political influence on the basis of formation of corresponding structures; 3. Active use of the Internet as an instrument of human rights, public activity and political self-organization of society; 4. Ensuring a permanent socio-political dialogue with the possibility of electronic feedback between the authorities and citizens in real-time in order to overcome relapses of the administrative-command system at all levels of the hierarchy of power; 5. Development of effective information and communication competition in the segment of conquest and preservation of political power.

In view of this, the urgency of the stated problem is not in doubt, because constructive, rather than distorted, understanding of citizens of the social situation is the key to the development of a democratic society.

Myroslava Zelenska

Written by

Geek project manager with nonstandard thinking. Passionate for neurology, intellect, mind and all about ‘how-this-damned-brain-works’. Blog is bilingual.

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