PECULIARITIES OF FAKE MEDIA MESSAGES (ON THE EXAMPLE OF RUSSIAN FAKES ABOUT UKRAINE)

Information wars have long been used as a full-fledged weapon against the enemy, using both manipulation and completely fake messages. The methods used to disseminate false media messages by their authors are completely different, but the goal is almost always the same - to make the target audience that consumes information, believe and be influenced.

Scientists have identified three main elements of the media chain: the author of the message - the transmission channel - the recipient of the message. According to M. McLuhan, media channels of information transmission are a technical continuation of natural channels: radio (auditory), printed periodicals (visual), television (combination of vocal and visual), and Internet MMC (combination of auditory, optic and visual).

Therefore, it is worth considering the ways in which fakes are distributed - through photos, videos or just texts. Very often two or sometimes three distribution channels are used, because video can accompany text and attached to it photos, so this division should be considered conditional.

Having analysed fake reports from the Russian-language media segment, it became possible to draw conclusions about the use of basic evaluation criteria according to professional journalistic standards of publications. The emotionality of the texts, which was conditionally divided into two groups - "excessive emotionality" and "moderate neutrality" was taken into account. As for the excessive emotionality of the texts, it has been determined that it is most common in the video, a little less in the photo, and very little in the texts. As to the studies concerning the topic of fakes in the Russian-language media segment, a vast majority of studies concerned Ukraine, and military issues namely.

Usually, the authors of fake media reports aim to destabilize the situation, and to make the target audience believe in nonsense and behave predictably, to divert attention from their own problems.