Securitization of Social Consciousness As a Consequence of the Spread of Post-Truth Politics

The modern era is characterized by a high level of economic and political uncertainty, which is combined with ethical relativism, the mobility of value frameworks and the manipulation of information for political purposes. The victims of "post-truth politics" or "post-truth" are often politicians, government officials and just ordinary citizens. Disinformation and unverified facts are especially widespread during hybrid international conflicts when it is quite problematic to follow fake narratives.

The situation when truth is inseparable from fake information became one of the reasons for the interest of mass audiences to information security issues. As a consequence, it opened up opportunities for intelligence agencies around the world to strengthen control over the private lives of citizens.

Giddens defined "ontological security" as an increase in confidence while maintaining a positive social identity. In the context of hybrid conflicts, the society securitizes the problems of the political and cultural field to the detriment of real security problems in an attempt to maintain a world view everyone is accustomed to and to protect the society from external information influences.

The data of the annual sociological monitoring (2020-2025) of the Institute of Socio-Political Research using as empirical data allows us to identify the dynamics of attitudes towards a number of controversial political and socio-cultural issues, including the context of an acute conflict in Ukraine.

The securitization of social consciousness in modern Russia is accompanied by the consolidation of prejudices, negative ethnocultural stereotypes and deterioration of public opinion towards migrants; political hostility towards Western countries. The political and public narrative demonstrates both the confrontation between the North and the South, and the West and the East. The active use of securitization for political purposes leads to the erosion of the international security system and contributes to the popularization and legitimization of hybrid methods of political confrontation.