| Abstract [eng] |
Russian annexation of Crimea without “a gun fired” in 2014 marks a critical point when entire international community started realizing the power of modern informational threats which arises together with newest informational technologies. Ukraine as a victim of intensive informational warfare has become a pioneer in addressing these challenges through applying extensive countermeasures. Though the informational warfare facilitated conflict is ongoing in the country, latest polls have demonstrated the decrease in the support of the society for government actions towards confronting informational threats. The aim of the thesis, therefore, is to indicate what factors foster such reactions of the Ukrainian society in the context of wider debate over informational security and hybrid warfare. The theory of securization was chosen as a main ground of the analysis and an explanatory tool which provided valuable insights while describing the key variables. Thus, the three hypothesis were tested through process tracing method: H1: Ukrainian government is not capable and (or) is not willing to communicate their decisions to the society which leads to Ukrainians disapproval of the policy of information securization; H2: The division of society in smaller groups of interests leads to Ukrainians disapproval of the policy of information securization; H3: The expectations of the society in terms of countermeasures to information threats implemented by the government is not met and, as a result, it leads to Ukrainians disapproval of the policy of information securization. The conducted process tracing analyses has revealed the following implications: 1) the chosen strategy of Ukrainian government not to justify the implemented countermeasures can hardly explain the reactions of the society but the hypothesis cannot be denied by itself; 2) the division of the society in terms of its support for government action only partly provides an explanation regarding the outcomes of latest polls; 3) the strongest argument that passed “hoop” test is that society do not want to sacrifice the pro-western political course by threatening freedom of speech and press in order to maintain information security. |
