The article presents the results of an applied political research devoted to the implementation of the manipulative effect of search engines (SEME) during the election campaign in 2021 in Russia. SEME is a technology for influencing a wide audience, aimed at transforming behavioral effects and shaping public opinion through changes in the issuance of digital search engines. The order of issue, as well as the tone of the results, can significantly influence the attitude of undecided users and their subsequent electoral choice. According to the results of the study, a number of manipulations in the nature of search results were recorded, associated with an increase in negative coverage of the electoral process, election results and the state of the party system, achieved through the active dissemination of materials from foreign information resources.

The article discusses digital technologies of external destructive information and psychological influence on the constituent entities of the Russian Federation bordering Ukraine: Belgorod, Bryansk, Zaporozhye, Kursk and Kherson regions, Donetsk People’s Republic, and Lugansk People’s Republic. The authors used cognitive mapping to study an array of publications of relevant content in relevant Telegram channels. As a result, key digital ways of achieving external destructive information and psychological influence have been identified, which are technological methods of information propaganda and manipulation of public consciousness. Propaganda most often uses the techniques of demonization and stigmatization, and manipulation uses negativization, primitivization, tendentious selection of information and parasitism. At the same time, most often in information materials of a deconsolidating nature, which provoke ethnic and socio-economic splits, the manipulative technique of primitivization is used.