Mathematical Models for Information Waves Profiling

A person living in the era of information and communication technologies constantly passes through the flows of information that fill the media space. Today, as never before, media have an impact on society. Internet communication plays a special role due to its availability, speed of information dissemination and the possibility of providing anonymity. One of the ways of propagandistic influence on the collective consciousness is launching an information wave. Information wave is a fast and controlled dissemination of information in target social groups, which can lead to destabilization of political situation in a country and activation of protest forces. Identification and analysis of information waves contributes to the correct prediction of the further dissemination of information and the adoption of decisions to manage this distribution. The key in the analysis is to identify the profile of the wave (natural, artificial, mixed or technical), which depends on the dynamics and structure of the distribution, as well as on the context and actors spreading the wave. Thus, we are interested not only in the process of information dissemination, but also in the semantic component of information and users profiles. The main problem in the study of information waves is the lack of a systematic approach to analysis because of their diversity. Therefore, the aim of the study is aggregation of approaches to the information waves profiling. The analysis is conducted on the database of publications in the Russian-language Internet with a mention of Sergei Sobyanin in 2017. On the eve of the mayoral election in September 2018, it was interesting to analyze the information field around the current mayor and assess how artificial the publications about him are, as well as to find out who is manipulating the information and how it is distributed.