Russian media during the pandemic. Article Two: Media manipulation as a resource for influencing people’s minds and behavior

The article describes and analyzes manipulation techniques used by official and amateur media resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept “manipulation” in this article refers to a system of ways to influence the minds of people in order to change behavior in the direction necessary for the manipulator. A lot of works are dedicated to the theoretical analysis of manipulation technology, the generalization of which made it possible to identify and describe more than 70 specific manipulation techniques. All of them were grouped into six clusters: (1) general characteristics of a manipulative media text, (2) special ways of presenting information, (3) control of the perception of meanings, (4) words with manipulative potential, (5) syntactic constructions, (6) logical tricks. The results of the study showed that both state and independent Russian media and foreign publications published a large amount of news on the COVID-19 pandemic and actively participated in the public discussion. However, the news was covered in different ways, in particular, differences were observed in the number and types of manipulation techniques used. In general, most of the manipulations are concentrated in the federal media, the purpose of which is to ensure the population's calmness and the support of the policy of promoting vaccination. Independent media used their manipulation efforts to criticize the government and its failures. Foreign media tried to present more objective information with fewer manipulationtechniques and in a more positive way. The study confirmed the idea that, in the context of digitalization of communication, the concept of digital literacy becomes relevant. The ability to work with digital formats, create and consume digital content - all this is included in the mandatory tools that a modern person needs to cope with the information flow, to be inside the digital environment. It is equally important, in the authors' opinion, to organize work on constant monitoring of the activities of the media in terms of targets and applied technologies and ways of influencing people's minds and behavior. This information should be accessible to a mass audience. On the basis of such information, measures of public response to the activities of the media should be taken.

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