The Influence of State Propaganda Upon Different Groups of People

Anastasia Seliverstova

Bachelor's thesis

Abstract:

The development of the internet and continuing technological improvements have made propaganda an extraordinarily powerful tool for influencing public opinion. It has becoming harder to identify and combat the impacts of propaganda on society as a growing number of new forms of it appear. This thesis aims to examine the impact of propaganda on different demographic groups in combining both traditional survey techniques and modern IT technologies, with use of a survey targeting Russian citizens living in Russia and the European Union. Its data collected is to be analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics to identify significant trends related to how propaganda affects people. To study the emotional impact of propaganda, data from a selected social media platform is collected using the VK API and sentiment analysis performed using pre-trained AI. The theoretical part was devoted to the exploration of topics relevant topics including the background and development of propaganda, how it works on social media and the internet, and the use of technology in interpreting and analysing online content. The practical Part was devoted to the collection of required data from a social media platform for statistical, sentimental and text analyses.

Keywords

IBM SPSS Statistics, API, Frequency Analysis, Sentimental Analysis, Opinion mining, Chi-Square Analysis, Telegram, VKontakte, Yandex, Survey, Propaganda

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 19. 3. 2023

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 17. 5. 2023
• Supervisor: John Phillip Sabou, Ph.D.
• Reader: Miloš Ulman, Ph.D.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Economics and Management

Bachelor programme:
Informatics