Urbanonymic Acts in the Context of Modern Information Wars: Symbolic and Communicational Functions

Abstract

The study is relevant due to the need for effective diagnosis of such manifestations of the information war, they have the external form of memorial urbanonymic acts (name and renaming). Revealing of the hidden essence of an urban anonymous act is possible provided that it is properly described in terms of the social communication theory and a corresponding analysis of both the structure and functions of the act itself as well as the associated media texts. This should contribute, on the one hand, to counteract hostile acts of information war disguised as urbanonymic memorial changes, and, on the other hand, to use, consciously and systematically, similar tools of information influence. The theoretical significance of this intelligence is to expand the application field of the theory of social communication and social communication science as a whole due to urbanonymy as one of the channels of mass communication. The purpose of the research is to describe this category of urbanonymic acts, to determine their functions in the aspect of social communication, to propose the criteria for distinguishing the analyzed denominations from the general array of names and renames in urbanonymy. The study used the following methods: descriptive – to determine the type of urbannymic acts and to determine the factors that influence the acquisition of the character of the démarches to foreign countries; methods of analysis and synthesis – in order to formulate criteria for the presence in the act of signs of a foreign policy demarche; empiric analysis and structural-functional analysis – to reveal the information and socio-political context of the urbanonyma changes and to clarify their functional characteristics. As a result of the analysis of urbanonymic renamings in Ukraine during 2014–2019, criteria have been formulated which allowed to distinguish urbanonymic acts with signs of foreign policy demarche. The functions of such acts in the context of modern information wars are defined, in particular the key role of symbolic and communication functions is substantiated.