Round Table: Sociology of Information Wars

Abstract

The first Russian debate dedicated to the sociology of information wars was held in Ekaterinburg during the Fifth Russian National Sociological Congress (19-21 of October, 2016).
The participants to the debates were sociologists, social researchers, members of the academic society and media researchers.
During the discussion, many questions were observed from different points of view. All the specialists concluded that the subject of research of Information war from a sociological point is still needed to be found and established, as there is no settled opinion about this topic.
Some questions about the instruments and effects of the information war were also discussed during the round table talks. It was thus necessary to define some characteristics of the Information War – what researchers identify as an attack with the aim to facilitate information affection and what they do not identify as an attack.
The moderators of the discussion, Igor Zadorin (Research Group “ZIRCON”) and Vladimir Rimskiy (Foundation “INDEM”), mentioned some projects dedicated to the topics of information war and information affection, that was already held by modern Russian speaking sociologists. The question of polls as a tool of forming the mass opinion about the subject was also mentioned by Elena Petrenko (Foundation “Social Opinion”).
During the table talks some decisions were also made about the further strategy for researchers and the academic community. One of the offers was to unite within the framework of the Facebook group “Civil Defense against Information War”.