Modern Wartime Psyops: Communicative Typology

The article is aimed at detailing and illustrating the basic technologies of PSYOPS utilized within the modern information field, exploring the specificity of pathogenicity implementation in PSYOPS discourse as an object and the key communicative characteristics of the analyzed discourses making it possible to discern them into certain types as a subject. Traditionally, the pathogenic texts, which are the backbone of any PSYOP due to being its verbal, communicative representation, are distinguished into those that contribute to the spread of violence (reference to manipulating the negative emotions pushed to the max), pornography (reference to manipulating the positive emotions pushed to the max) and texts of totalitarian ideology and propaganda in mass communication. The first two types obviously pathogenic and are explicitly prohibited by the current legislation, while the third type of pathogenic texts is quite difficult to categorize as actually illegal. It is usually the third type that is being utilized in the PSYOP paradigm, due to its legal status uncertainty (which makes it easy to implement into public communications). A thorough linguistic analysis of over 5 000 pathogenic discourses made it possible to divide PSYOPS discourses into the basic types, according to the techniques utilized. In this particular article, we aim to single out the basic PSYOPS types which the russian propaganda has incessantly been using even before the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, but has unprecedently increased since then, in order to destabilize the information field in Ukraine and create an unparalleled tension in the society — as well as to whitewash its own war crimes, even though those have been fixed and documented by a number of renowned world organizations. The following PSYOPS techniques are characterized basing on their communicative peculiarities: “goldfish”, reframing, “merry pictures”, official papers manipulation, clickbait, information alibi, demonizing, witch hunt — with the according examples provided. Having presented and illustrated the most frequent PSYOPS techniques, it can be stated that singling out the prevalent PSYOPS types will help craft ways of countering them, and thus, would allow to reduce or even fully neutralize the harmful effects of the original pathogenic array.