On Russian Interpretations of Reality Aimed at Influencing Public Opinion Regarding Transcarpathia and the Local Hungarian Minority

Abstract

In recent decades we have observed a change in the nature of conflicts in our world, and consequently a transformation of warfare. Among these changes, the expansion of the operational domains of military action stands out prominently. In connection with this, we can observe a recession of traditional kinetic means into the background and a corresponding rise of non-traditional, non-kinetic means, as a result of which the role of information operations in particular appears to have grown in importance. The most significant element of these operations can be identified as the information operations carried out in the cognitive dimension. In the case of the Russian-Ukrainian war as well, the Russian side is conducting significant information operations in order to establish adaptive information superiority. As for the target audiences of these influence activities, as the Ukrainian crisis has progressed, the public opinion and decision-makers of the international community have come to play an increasingly prominent role. In connection with the influencing of these target audiences, the research therefore examines the news content of the two most significant English-language Russian news portals (RT and SputnikNews), in order to determine how Transcarpathia and the situation of the local Hungarian minority appear in the course of these operations. For the reconstruction of these models of reality, the information appearing in the news portals' articles was processed primarily through qualitative content analysis, which was supplemented, as a check, by quantitative content analysis. As a result of the research, regarding the Russian interpretations of reality aimed at influencing perceptions of Transcarpathia and the local Hungarian minority, and the messages formed from them, it became evident that Russia employed content related to these topics in accordance with its own interests, in order to prompt the international community's only indirectly affected or entirely unaffected actors and decision-makers toward forms of behavior and action aligned with its own goals.