The Impact of Social Media on Global Democracy Movements

Abstract

The proliferation of social media has helped to empower individuals across the globe to engage in political activism. This form of online communication began in 1997 as virtual communities via SixDegrees.com; a web site that enabled users to list friends or send messages (Billings, 2017). By 2007, social networking services and life updates via microposts became popular on Facebook and Twitter. Within the past decade, the usage of online platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, have been vital to many political campaigns and movements. While some view social media as a democratizing force that enables the sharing of ideas to benefit from the broadest platform available, others describe social media as platforms fostering the spread of misinformation. For that, it is critically necessary for political experts, theorists, and politicians to understand the effects that social media has on global democracy movements. In order to establish a comprehensive review and explanation of this area of understanding, the following will be analyzed: the dual nature of social media as it empowers and lacks credibility as a dependable news source, the significance of accumulating insight into social media’s amplifying role in democratic engagement and political activism worldwide, an explanation of the research methodology to examine the developments of social media in five global democracy movements, North Korea, the Arab Spring, Hong Kong, Turkey, and the United States, and a discussion of the findings and implications for current and future practices of democracy.

Keywords social media, global democracy, political activism, misinformation, democratic engagement, political campaigns, Arab Spring, online platforms.