Technology Impact in Modern Political Communications: Psychological Grounds

Abstract

The author writes about the manipulative technologies used in political communications and an attempt to interpret through the prism of psychological and anthropological concepts (cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology). The article discusses such political technologies as “Wait Zone”, “Victimisational Snow”, “semantic differentiation”, “Fear trade”, “false theatricalisation”, “red herring”, and “Creating a victim”. Political technologists analyse them quite superficially, not trying to understand the deep psychological foundations of their effectiveness, so an attempt is made to understand this issue with support for social, cognitive, and evolutionary psychology. The author does not claim that his explanations will be exhaustive, but it suggests that they can shed light on the particular effectiveness of media exchange techniques. This issue is particularly relevant in connection with the thesis of many specialists that humanity has entered a new media manipulation era — The post-truth era. It seems that this determines the special relevance of this article.