The Impact of Globalization on Social Media and Democracy

Abstract

Social media rapidly spreads as an instrument of news production and consumption, especially in digital journalism. The social digital content system is characterised by short form of information, microsocial interactions and the availability of techniques that could diminish the veritable original source attribution. These circumstances subject news sources to potential false beliefs due to the misperception of what is materially seen, due to the rapid access to a huge amount of information, and due to the impossibility to ascertain the true original information source. News is a core component of democracy, representing public opinion. Consequently, the impact of fake viral news dissemination corresponds to the alteration and distortion of public opinion information. Social media has a significant role in the generation and dissemination of news. Such a news process is an integral part of the social discussion, forming a social space where the discussion topics could receive a large amount of attention. This social space is analysed exploiting Tweets posted either by journalists or by citizens on a certain public news event. The analyses are performed by spotting outliers in the discussions social space. The parameters defining the social space are modeled through floor variables. Statistical and probabilistic methods are adopted to identify the position of Tweet variables. In the end, these methods are employed to predict outlier events in the social space for a certain public news event, offering a characterization of the newsworthy events which are likely to be extensively discussed in the digital social space. (Khan et al.2021)

Keywords: globalization, social media, democracy, fake news, public opinion, digital journalism, information dissemination