Political Manipulation via Crisis Ideologization

Abstract

Crisis ideologization as one of the tools to carry out political manipulations plays a leading role in the construction of reality, has the powerful potential for influencing the mass consciousness. It makes the manipulation of the public opinion possible, impacts the behaviour and political decisions of the recipient to get rid of political dividends in favour of the actor. The actors exercise control over the value balance in the society both within their own country and abroad using a set of tactics – special tools, which allow influencing political decision-making and public opinion to ideologize mass consciousness. The mechanism of ideologizing a crisis is wide-spread in modern international relations. The author offers a typology of manipulative tools relying on the study of crisis situations by the method of critical discourse analysis, and singles out the tactics of legitimization of the political actors’ actions, censure and condemnation, coercion and punishment, accusations, threats of war, misinformation, seduction, insults, and distraction. The aim of the article is to describe the mechanisms of political manipulations by means of crisis ideologization. The study is based on mass media publications representing various crises emerged in the post-Soviet space since 2020.