The Information as a Source of Power and a Cause
Scientific Proceedings of Vanadzor State University Humanitarian and Social Sciences (ISSN 2738-2915)
2023 vol 1
The Information as a Source of Power and a Cause of Conflict Discourse Occurrence
Ani Harutyunyan
Summary
Key words: post-industrial society, control, information flows, conflict, ontological transformations, knowledge
This article discusses one of the main reasons for the emergence of the conflict discourse in modern reality. Power or a desire to establish power have been the main causes of conflict at every stage of the development of society. The first part of the article provides a brief overview of the basic concepts of establishing power. Besides, it also undertakes a philosophical and historical analysis of the approaches, viewpoints of thinkers and scholars, in which this issue is highlighted in details. Thereafter, the period of post-industrial society along with its features, manifested in the socio-economic and political spheres, is discussed. The old forms of acquiring power, i.e. wealth and money, are not actual any more, and now the time has come for knowledge and information. However, the so-called consumer thinking, characteristic of the postmodern stage, gradually makes people live easier and more meaningless. An ontological transformation is taking place: the interest and importance attributed to knowledge is gradually decreasing, since it requires more and more mental concentration and time resources from a person, which s/he is no longer predisposed to provide. Instead, the internet provides access to the excessive amount of information with no special efforts to acquire.
At the end of the second part of the article, it has been concluded that a modern conception of power has emerged in the new world order. In the context of a clear exaggeration of the role and importance of information, it is mostly considered a source of power. Establishing control over information is perceived as equivalent to the possession of power. And since the struggle for power has always been assumed as the emergence of various conflicts, it turns out that in the modern world, conflicts arise and develop precisely due to information overload. In terms of the prevalence of social networks and the constant access of people to the often unverified and scientifically unproven information flows, is considered reliable and quite acceptable, just because it is simply talked and written about too much.