Information Occasions and Information Support of the Russian Federation Hybrid Warfare Against Ukraine

Abstract

The events of Russia's local hybrid warfare in Ukraine are in fact the information occasions of Russia's global information war against the West which, especially expert circles, seem to comprehend it. Consequently, the problem arises: how local hybrid warfare is combined with global information warfare, and what media tools create narratives based on hybrid warfare that meet the interests of the propaganda initiators. It is important to determine the mechanisms of information influences on Ukrainian society and the world community in modern wars. The aim of the study was to find out how the general characteristics of Russian pro-government media reports (intensity, events and intentions) depend on the events in the war zone and the general situation in Ukraine, where the hybrid war is waged. In the study information and analytical materials of the Russian international multilingual information channel RT were researched. The headlines and leads of more than 44 thousand short information messages for the period from October 1, 2014 to June 30, 2020 and more than 1 thousand analytical materials for the period from October 1, 2018 to June 30, 2020 were analyzed. The following methods were applied: intent analysis of political discourse, methods of descriptive statistics, data visualization, testing of statistical hypotheses, correlation analysis, modeling of multiple regressions. The statistical data are consistent with the two hypotheses of the study: 1) RT reports follow a selective event orientation; 2) RT reports have a clear object and intention orientation. The obtained results let the authors conclude that the mechanism of Russian propagandists’ media influence is conscious, targeted, with pre-planned consequences and begins with the first words of the publications, i.e. the headline and the lead.