In psychological operations, the enemy takes advantage of the atmosphere of emotion and prejudice – Mehr news agency Iran and world’s news
Mehr News Agency – Department of Religion and Thought – Zeinab Hosseini Method: Today’s world is the world of communication and 75% of our daily time is spent communicating with others. Dominant governments, especially the United States, to achieve their aggressive goals through psychological operations employ a significant group of experienced and experienced employees and by hiring experienced professionals. In social fields, communication psychology, anthropology, etc., they try to get useful information from the target society. Through the Internet and cyberspace, human communication and social relations between people become virtual, and humans without limitations, beyond Time, space and border communicate with each other. Communication that can have political-social, cultural and emotional content. Today, virtual social networks, which have been expanding at an unprecedented speed, have been favored by the new generation, and are used as a tool of psychological operations for color revolutions in non-aligned countries. Psychological operations have always existed to influence the mind and behavior of people in the target society. Competitors have always tried to influence the opinions and behavior of the other party and force them to do something that will satisfy their goals.
Accordingly, to investigate what psychological operations are in social networks and how to deal with them Sue The use of psychological operations in these networks, we had a conversation with Hojat al-Islam Mehdi Masalami, a researcher and researcher, the result of which you can read below:
What are social networks? Why is it so important?
Social networks are a means of communication that have emerged in the current era, and different people can communicate with each other through this technology and share ideas, media and images, as well as other new possibilities. Virtual space users are connected to each other in a network and by highlighting each other’s information, they transfer each other’s information quickly. Today, the growth and expansion of these accelerated facilities are progressing very rapidly.
Today, every person has become a media and transmits his information to others in a networked manner, and unlike the past when there were media where people only received their news information from them, in today’s age, anyone can become a media and When they are placed in the platform of social networks, depending on their activity and intellectual and analytical power, they can make this individual media bigger and include more people under their network by using the available tools.
* What are the characteristics of the content produced in social networks that the other party can use the same content to create psychological operations in social networks?
Social networks should be analyzed. Each social network operates according to different needs of people. Usually, we have been passive about social media and instead of being proactive, we have tried to respond to the harm it causes. For example, if we pay attention to platform X (Twitter), we can see that this media is active in producing short textual content; Today, people need a wide range of information and want to receive that information in the form of summary and abstract. Based on this, it can be said that Platform X is a space of intellectual discourse because not everyone can be a content producer. Sometimes we were not active in this space or in Instagram social networks, which is the most dominant media, we acted passively against this type of social networks because in this field people produced text that was harmful to our religious, political, cultural, etc. discourse.
We should not act and follow the way of opponents and competitors in terms of content and style, but the truth should be expressed. Of course, opponents and competitors always try to show off their right to show off on social networks, but it is necessary for us to show our right to show off in our actions and media approach. It should be said that sometimes restrictions make us unable to show our truth and the enemy from it Sue use.
* Describe the methods and methods of psychological operations in social networks?
Psychological warfare and operations are not new. Today, due to the advancement of technology, the tools of psychological operations have become new. Therefore, operations and psychological warfare have existed since the past, and the enemy has always tried to introduce rumors to the people under the guise of truth. In order to achieve their goals, they use tools such as big lies, because the bigger the lie, the harder it is to deny it. Also, in psychological operations of social networks, the enemy takes advantage of the atmosphere of emotion and prejudice and rides on the wave of emotions. Sometimes it is seen that some use their false methods to deal with the psychological operations of enemies in social networks, while this is not the right solution. While the solution to deal with the enemy’s psychological warfare in social networks is to allow more insiders to access information, sometimes people who are sympathetic to society and are right-oriented do not have access to information, while these prominent people require to be recognized. Sometimes these same people have been able to create networks; Therefore, if the information is available to this spectrum, they will be able to enlighten on the axis of truth and with the psychological atmosphere of rumors and the platform of virtual space. fake Play and fight fake news. Or they can even investigate issues due to free access to information and actively create issues in the networks that put competitors and opponents in a passive position instead of us being in a passive position.
* What should be done to deal with this psychological operation in the real world?
Currently, according to the networks that exist in the virtual space, it is possible to make connections channelized and place people in a special space that is separated from the truth and may be caught in illusions and a virtual revolution is created in such a way that a person thinks that the same thing exists in the world of reality, while this thing does not exist externally. For example, in the atmosphere that the country was facing last year, this was clearly seen because some people who were digested in the virtual space thought that a revolution and transformation had really taken place. Therefore, when revolutionary activists and the cultural arena of virtual space are together, it makes competitors unable to dominate this space, therefore it is necessary and emphasized to expand our activity in social networks, and this does not require that people Hire them directly or pay them a fee or like the enemy of the pages fake produce so that in this way we can criticize their discourse, no, but allow real people who are of our own gender to be present in social networks so that they can break the illusion created by the enemy and in this field create space
In the real world, it is necessary to recognize these developments and accept the dominance of social networks on people’s thoughts and even enter into some training; For example, in education, which is part of education and the other part is education, if we want the education system to become active and not remain passive, it is necessary to provide a series of trainings in the field of social networks to today’s youth so that the generation of teenagers and young people To know the dealings and behavior with social networks and to be given information. Information is not for the purpose of making students cultural managers, but the method that exists and is presented all over the world is to quickly introduce effective people and express moral aspects. If we are ethical, responsible and truthful in this space, many of the bad advertisements will disappear, so let’s try to put this issue apart from our educational and cultural points and convey it to the youth more quickly.
* If there is a point at the end, say:
In cyber space, we must have a media policy; Today, the enemies enter with a certain policy, but sometimes we enter this field with feelings, sometimes the media policy is not ruling in these cases, and there is no media flexibility in these areas because of the approaches we emphasized before, we don’t want those approaches. while the media space is a space that requires a lot of media flexibility so that we can grow a lot in these networks.