Media Manipulation and Psychological War in Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova
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A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Saran, Vladislav Article Media Manipulation and Psychological War in Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova CES Working Papers Provided in Cooperation with: Centre for European Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Suggested Citation: Saran, Vladislav (2016) : Media Manipulation and Psychological War in Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, CES Working Papers, ISSN 2067-7693, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Centre for European Studies, Iasi, Vol. 8, Iss. 4, pp. 738-752 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/198490 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. 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Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.econstor.eu CES Working Papers – Volume VIII, Issue 4 MEDIA MANIPULATION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR IN UKRAINE AND THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA Vladislav SARAN* Abstract: Media manipulation and psychological war in Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova is a battleground of various psychological methods in order to subordinate the masses often under cover of alleged common good. In this regard Russian propaganda machinery is one that works perfectly since the Soviet period. Ukrainian crisis swept the struggle for Ukraine's informational space which has also affected neighboring countries, here referring to Moldova. The conflict between Ukraine and Russia now is more ambiguous because information warfare methods and techniques have become more sophisticated and aim directly to misinformation, informational intoxication and propaganda through the media. Keywords: warfare; television; manipulation; Ukraine; Moldova; social media JEL Classification: F50; D83 Introduction Ukrainian crisis has brought up the phenomenon of psychological warfare, part of informational warfare, by using propaganda and media manipulation. Psychological warfare is defined using information against people's minds through information, disinformation, manipulation, propaganda and subliminal techniques for influencing the purpose of changing conception, attitudes, choices and enemy’s behavior forces. It takes the form of operations aimed at: the national will, statesmanship, political structures, commanders and cultural heritage (Libicki, 1995, p. 10). Dissemination of information permanently exerts influence on personal needs level and interests of the people, predisposing the individual to concrete and advantageous political behavior, which, however, is not perceived by society as imposed by the mass media. The psychological impact produced by this new type of war is a difficult subject to study; it is hard to identify the participants because of their clandestine matter. This paper investigates methods and strategies of media manipulation that were used in Ukraine and Moldova in the context of the Ukrainian crisis. Last but not least, this paper contains ways of * Researcher, The Institute of Legal and Political Research, Academy of Sciences of Moldova, e-mail: [email protected] 738 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License Vladislav SARAN cooperation and actions, both between EU countries as well as in Moldova and Ukraine, to prevent and combat media manipulation. 1. Psychological warfare - fight with the invisible enemy The media has a huge influence on political processes in modern society by forming mass visions on economic, political, social issues. If in the first phase of the conflict in Ukraine, Russian media reports about alleged atrocities committed by Ukrainians, easily proved to be false, later Russians began to spread conspiracy theories: for example, the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (17 July 2014), the plane was actually filled with corpses and that Ukrainians shot it down in an operation under false flag. Currently, Russian media promotes the idea that any information source cannot be credible. Some Russian and Ukrainian media outlets avoid publicizing certain topics of public interest, by providing incomplete information, without presenting a complex array for public, or giving them sufficient detail to understand what happens in one case or another. Psychological warfare was mainly seen by using media strategies of exaggerating the facts and by using filtering information and selection of sources. Most of the news were and continue to be unilateral, presenting reality through some alleged representatives of the regions, without providing sufficient access to central authority’s position. Russia-controlled TV-channels (such as LifeNews, Россия1, Россия24, Первый канал, НТВ, РЕН ТВ) as well as Ukrainian TV-channels (like Inter, Ukraina 24), run by pro-Russia oligarchs or Russian news providers; absorb prominent positions in the Ukrainian media (Veebel, 2015). These publications and online portals illustrated Ukrainian army as criminals, murderers, and even Nazi perpetrators, while ignoring the causes of the war or discussion of Russia’s involvement. This image has been created methodically, using very aggressive and emotional rhetoric. Demonstrably false stories of crucified children and raped women were created and replicated in order to discredit the Ukrainian army. According to Yevhen Fedchenko, Ukrainian journalist and administrator of the site stopfake.org, the TV stations as RT (Russia Today) and The Voice of Russia are the sources of information designed to spread false information about current events, which are directed primarily towards Western audience. Russia Today has an audience of 600 million viewers (Chernichkin, 2014) and set a record of 1 billion views on YouTube. To compare, Ukrainian site stopfake.org that reveals Russian false news about Ukraine, have six million visitors in the first six months of existence 739 MEDIA MANIPULATION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR IN UKRAINE AND MOLDOVA (March-September 2014). Therefore it is clear that the financial possibilities of the Russian propaganda succeed to cover a large enough area as to form public opinion on Moscow will (Chernichkin, 2014). 2. Myth of community of all post-Soviet states Entertainment is a very effective modern weapon in the context of manipulation of the masses, because political events and foreign news, which change every day, are poorly understood by ordinary citizens and attachment to TV channels seems to be a harmless fun. The individual feels psychological need to be attached to a media outlet that can be considered of a greater trust and that will provide a brief summary of all events in an accessible language. Piotr Pogorzelski, notes in his book ''Ukrainian borsch: from the Soviet state to dignity revolution (2015) '' the gap between the reality that tries to be present on television and real life in Ukraine. Most of the TV channels in Russian are an assortment of channels, series or feature films that tell either nostalgia for the Soviet period or the adventures of heroes in post-Soviet period. An efficient Moscow media tool of influence is, what is called, the maintaining of ''myth of community of all post-Soviet states” (Pogorzelski, 2015, p.62). By this notion, polish author considering some Russian melodramatic serials very popular not only in Ukraine or Moldova but throughout all the former Soviet countries forming indestructible concept that people in CIS countries have a common lifestyle, shared a common language of communication and common social problems. In particular there are very popular detective series (such as'' Streets of the Broken Lanterns’’ or Gluhari'' the mountain rooster'') and documentaries about the Soviet army and the brave soldiers fighting in the Second World War. However young and middle-aged people, like writer Irina Karpa, gave up watching the TV in favor of watching other entertainment on personal computer. The writer stresses she cannot understand why Ukrainians watch Russian TV series. They are ridiculous, they really showcase another reality, and other people, other problems and she feels it so in Ukraine as abroad (Pogorzelski, 2015, p. 63). I. Karpa recognizes the fact that there is no good quality Ukrainian TV production or entertainment as a viable alternative and the majority of the people watch Russian TV stations simply because are they got used to them and because they do not want to know anything else. In Moldova there is the same lack of attractive TV channels to combat big budget Russian TV propaganda channels. 740 Vladislav SARAN The audience unconsciously attach themselves to a media outlet that step by step dictates