Fake News as a Method of Information War (on the Example of a Conflict Over the Landfill Construction at the Shies Station)

The problem of fake news is considered in the context of information wars between supporters and opponents of the landfill construction at the Shies station on the border of Arkhangelsk Oblast and the Komi Republic. The author's observations allowed concluding that the sources of false information on this problem were the official media, and the fact-checking activity came from citizen journalists and ordinary subscribers of communities in social media. This is what minimized the expected manipulative effect of deliberately fake messages. The discussion of the construction of a garbage dump from Moscow bore all the signs of an information war, which was conducted with the use of manipulative technologies, mutual compromising materials, information stuffing, and fakes. Political strategists from the federal center, who were assigned the task of "ending the protests" by April 2018, worked on the positive image of the landfill. However, their efforts led to nothing because the local community widely opposed the project. The author analyzed four groups of sources that were both for and against construction: (1) community pages in the social media VKontakte, Telegram, and Facebook that were created by activists, residents, deputies of two regions, which reflected the position of residents; (2) professional independent media that strove for objectivity; (3) state official media and community pages that reflected the position of the authorities of Arkhangelsk Oblast and Moscow; (4) regional network media, affiliated with local authorities, that ignored the topic of Shies. The author shows that trust in sources of the first type was high: at the peak of protest activity, in less than a day, the number of news views was more than 90 thousand, the number of likes exceeded six thousand, and reposts two thousand. Official sources, on the contrary, did not enjoy the trust of the audience, since they purposefully spread fakes to manipulate public opinion. The author analyzes the history of one fake throw-in in detail: reports in April 2019 that activists burned two wooden bridges leading to the Shies station. This case is interpreted as an example of deliberate misinformation to deceive residents in order to force them out of the landfill construction area. A decisive role in the fact that the manipulators did not achieve their goal belonged to the fact-checking activity of civil activists who lead thematic pages in social media, as well as of their subscribers who actively discussed media reports. As a result, at the Shies station, the erected structures are currently being dismantled, and a full reclamation of the territory is planned.

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