Social communication paradoxes in post-conflict societies

Abstract

The article presents the results of a media-analytical study of information flows in Ukraine and in the “new” subjects of the Russian Federation – Crimea and Sevastopol. The relevance of the study of post-conflict societies is dictated by the fact that in the digital era, an effective military solution must be supported by participation in the formation of the information agenda and management of information flows. The cases of color revolutions allow to speak of communication as a factor in the formation of unconventional social attitudes. The results of the study carried out by the authors show that in the condition of the crisis in society, communication networks are formed often due to the external influence. Information flows of a post-conflict society are formed not only from real events of everyday life and the existing socio-political situation, but also focusing on a number of topics and discourses that must be present in the media field without fail. They act as information triggers, system trigger tools that form a different streaming of flows, which were differentiated by the authors as single – and multi-wave. The analysis of the identified flows, that represent communicative network structures, testifies to the different genesis of their emergence and functioning, but the determining factor in this process is the geopolitical request for the formation of media tracks. The authors come to conclusion that the information flows of post-conflict societies are communicative-political structures of a dual nature: they initially carry the ideas of an open and democratic society, but then form conflict situations in the civil and media fields.