Komissar M.V.

The Gaidar forum hosted the discussion entitled ‘Russia-Spain: new opportunities', which was a continuation of the first joint meeting of the Gaidar forum-2017 devoted to the forty-year restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries. This year the discussion has been devoted mainly to mutual perception of each other by Russian and Spanish citizens, as well as to the peculiarities and pain points of the partners' representation in the media of the two countries. The information sphere in modern society is becoming a powerful means of influencing the socio-economic processes, the formation and development of international business communications. Increasing the amount of information, isolation from which is almost impossible, does not lead to knowledge and accumulation of knowledge, but to superficiality, since the perception of social reality is fragmented [Baudrillard, 2003] and consists of images [Marcuze, 1994]. This opens up additional possibilities for manipulating public consciousness [Horkheimer, Adorno, 1997]. Changes in the nature of international relations, the complexity of the processes of forming a positive image of a country externally is largely associated with the intensive development of information technologies [Anokhin, 2014]. New ways and means of communication and information transfer, on the one hand, lead to the expansion of the information field, ensuring the availability of information, but at the same time, on the other hand, they also cause an increase in the amount of defective information, and limit the possibilities for its critical evaluation. [Luman, 2001. P. 52-54].