Analyzing the phenomenon of «fake news» and its impact on today’s political processes, the authors note that since D. Trump was elected President of the United States in 2016, the term «fake news» has become widely used in the political lexicon both in Russian and foreign academic circles. «Fake news» means deliberately false «resonant» information that has a strong (often shocking) effect on the emotional sphere of information consumers. The study of this subject has become still more important since the adoption in the Russian Federation of the Law on Information, Information Technologies and the Protection of Information in the Russian Federation; the same effect should have recent changes in the Administrative Offenses Code aimed at counteracting the spread and influence of fake news. The impact of fake news can be linked both to their emotional content and to public anxiety, with people expecting new sensations that generate mass neurosis. In contrast to reliable information based on facts, fake news is based on fears, speculations, rumors, inflammatory allegations, often triggering a wide public resonance and provoking various forms of deviant behavior in society. Uncontrolled distribution of fake news in the information space causes such negative consequences as reducing trust in mass media, decline in the legitimacy of authority, rising social tensions and proliferation of protests. In such situations, particularly relevant is the control over dissemination of destructive information. All of this requires development of effective forms and methods for countering «fake news» and their influence on social and political processes.
politics; state; information; information technology; «fake news»; political stability; security; information war.