Manipulative Influences as Manifestations of the Modern Socio-Cultural Crisis

Pomerantsev P. This Is Not Propaganda. Adventures in the War Against Reality

Abstract

This review analyzes the research of a British journalist, writer, and TV producer Peter Pomerantsev “This Is Not Propaganda. Adventures in the War Against Reality”. This work was published in Ukrainian in 2020 and reveals the industry of mind manipulation and disinformation tools in the modern world. The author, who is one of the most well-known researchers of post-truth and the latest technologies of information influence, draws attention to the fact that modern man lives in a reality distorted by information-psychological attacks, fake news, targeted advertising, surrounded by a huge amount of information that does not provide any significant benefits. But what it does is misinforms and misleads and eventually exacerbates a deep cultural crisis. Social media and information technology lead covert information campaigns that can destabilize the economy of any country or wreak chaos by interfering in political processes, both in democratic and authoritarian regimes. The modern world has filled reality with information chaos, in which the value of truth and facts disappears, moreover, the researcher notes that there is a fundamental difference between the concept of propaganda in the post-truth era. After all, the purpose of classical propaganda at all times was to convince people of something, to force them to act in a certain way, or to intensify certain activities. In modern reality, propaganda does not work to persuade, but simply to undermine trust, increase passive moods, apathy, anxiety, and sow despair among people. The book is filled with factual material and interesting examples, it increases the interest and the fact that by analyzing the current reality, the author reveals the memoirs of his family, thus making a comparative analysis of the past twentieth century and builds his vision of the future.