The role of foreign language education in countering disinformation and hostile information-psychological operations in the educational space

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of foreign language competence — and, more specifically, the critical analytical skills cultivated through foreign language instruction — in equipping university students with the capacity to identify, evaluate, and resist disinformation and hostile information-psychological operations (IPSOs) conducted in non-native linguistic environments. Drawing on discourse analysis, media literacy frameworks, and a ive review of Scopus- and Web of Science-indexed scholarship, the study argues that foreign language education, when oriented towards critical digital literacy rather than linguistic proficiency alone, constitutes a strategically significant instrument of cognitive defence in the contemporary information warfare environment. The analysis demonstrates that the metalinguistic awareness, pragmatic sensitivity, and cross-cultural epistemic vigilance that advanced foreign language instruction fosters directly enhance students\" capacity to detect the rhetorical, syntactic, and logical manipulation strategies characteristic of disinformation content. The Ukrainian educational context provides a particularly urgent empirical case: in a society subject to sustained, multilingual hostile information operations, students" ability to critically engage with English-language and other foreign-language sources is not merely an academic skill but a matter of epistemic security. The paper concludes with practical recommendations for integrating critical media literacy and source analysis into foreign language curricula at Ukrainian technical universities.