In 2013, Ukraine’s geopolitical choice was in the centre of attention of the whole world, began to take a significant part of the information space. For the authorities of the neighbouring states, it is important to know what is happening in Ukraine and, if possible, influence on situation. After the Revolution of Dignity, the annexation of the Crimea by the Russian Federation and the initiation armed conflict in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Ukrainian society must understand the political stance of Russia towards Ukraine. Also no less important is the position of the Republic of Poland regarding Ukraine, since it was this state until recently was considered the main advocate of Ukraine in the European Union. Information component of the foreign policy of the states in the XXI century has a decisive influence on the formation of public opinion, the position of international institutions, international relations, the image of society and the state in the world. The purpose of this article is to find out the goals of the information policy of the presidents of Russia and Poland concerning Ukraine in the period 2014–2017. The article shows: the essence of the concept of «information policy»; the existing characteristics of the information policy of Russia and Poland concerning Ukraine; the positions of the presidents of Russia and Poland concerning Ukraine, which were published on their official sites; similarities and differences in the positions of the Russian and Polish presidents toward to Ukraine. Having analyzed the public statements of the presidents of Russia and Poland concerning Ukraine in 2014–2017, the author finds some similarities and differences. For example, the Russian president, as a rule, tell about Ukraine and Russia’s role in issues related to Ukraine, while Polish presidents usually speak about Poland and Ukraine, focusing on Polish-Ukrainian relations. The Russian authorities, in the person of its president, divide Ukraine into power and people (the power is bad, the people need help). For the Polish authorities, at least until recently, in the official speeches of the presidents it was about Ukraine as a single whole (the people and the power that this people elected). In addition to the geopolitical interest of Russia and Poland to Ukraine, Russian authorities often tell about their economic interests in Ukraine; Poland authorities – about security issues (the dependence of the security of Poland and Europe as a whole on the situation in Ukraine). Russian authorities call the Ukrainian nationalists guilty of worsening Russian-Ukrainian relations. The Polish authorities also lately actualized the discussion of the activities of Ukrainian nationalists in the first half of the twentieth century. This issue has recently been the basis of modern PolishUkrainian relations. The comparison of the theoretical definitions of the concept of «information policy», which was presented at the beginning of the report and the practical aspects elucidated in the process of analyzing the public statements of the presidents of the two states in 2014–2017, gives possibility to formulate another conclusion. The information policy of the Polish president is more in line with the definition – the promulgation of the official position of the president of the state, informing the society of the goals and plans of activity, and attempts to obtain public support. Instead, the information policy of the Russian president, or rather the information geopolitics, is more oriented towards the use of technologies of information and psychological influence on the individual and mass consciousness in order to form the necessary public opinion, behaviours that will meet the goals defined by the authorities.
Celem artykułu jest wyjaśnienie istoty i charakteru geopolityki jako nauki społecznej i dyscypliny akademickiej. Autor stoi na stanowisku, że geopolityka jest dyscypliną akademicką w ramach dziedziny nauk społecznych, a jej celem jest badanie wpływu, jaki na zjawiska polityczne wywierają zmieniające się w czasie i przestrzeni warunki geograficzne. Analizując dotychczasową ewolucję geopolityki autor stawia tezę o niezmienności jej natury. Jego zdaniem geopolityka jest wciąż taka sama w swojej naturze, a zmianie ulegają warunki geograficzne (jak i sposoby ich rozumienia), pełniące w geopolityce rolę czynników wyjaśniających. Zmiany te są z kolei konsekwencją procesów rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego, a zwłaszcza kolejnych rewolucji przemysłowych. To za sprawą szybkiego rozwoju technologii informatycznych, do listy geograficznych czynników wpływających na rzeczywistość polityczną dodano aktywność aktorów sceny politycznej w cyberprzestrzeni. Autor postuluje, że istotność ludzkiej aktywności informatycznej w cyberprzestrzeni powoduje konieczność wyodrębnienia kolejnej subdyscypliny geopolityki, a mianowicie geopolityki informatycznej.
EN
The purpose of this article is to clarify the essence and nature of geopolitics as a social science and academic discipline. The author's position is that geopolitics is an academic discipline within the field of social sciences, and its purpose is to study how political phenomena are influenced by geographic conditions that change over time and space. Analyzing the evolution of geopolitics to date, the author posits that its nature is unchanging. In his opinion, geopolitics is still the same in its nature, while the geographical conditions (as well as the ways of understanding them), which act as explanatory factors in geopolitics, change. These changes, in turn, are a consequence of the processes of socio-economic development, especially successive industrial revolutions. It is due to the rapid development of information technology that the activity of political actors in cyberspace has been added to the list of geographical factors influencing political reality. The author postulates that the relevance of human information activity in cyberspace makes it necessary to distinguish another subdiscipline of geopolitics, namely information geopolitics.
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