Social Media and Public Opinion

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Table of Contents

Research Topic
Research Questions
Brief description of the topic
Brief description of the approaches
Reference List

Research Topic

The issue under analysis is the influence of social media on public opinion and how it can be used by governments or different political powers to shape the beliefs of people and obtain the needed attitude to certain event or question.

Research Questions

There is no use denying the fact that modern age can be called the epoch of the digital revolution. People obtained access to a huge amount of information and they can get the data about everything they want. With this in mind, it is obvious, that social media became one of the most significant factors of our everyday life. Modern man cannot imagine his/her life without compatibility with this remedy. That is why, it is vital to understand the peculiarities of its functioning as social media becomes very important and influential remedy, which cannot be ignored. Resting on these facts, several questions appeared. One of them is whether we still control this remedy or not and to what extent it influences the common life and beliefs of people. All these questions seem to be of great importance nowadays and that is why deep analysis of the issue is needed.

Brief description of the topic

The issue we are going to investigate is connected with peoples beliefs and points of view. It is obvious, that nowadays humanity obtains information with the help of mass media (Mass Media Influence on Society n.d.). Different channels present the same information from different perspectives. That is why, very often people, who are armed with information about some accident or event, have, though, absolutely different opinions and points of view (Thorsten 2013). It is important to investigate the issue of the influence of social media on peoples worldview and determine whether it is done purposely or not. Moreover, it is also important to take into account the peculiarities of modern policy and conflicts. Every state tries to shape public opinion primarily, as it is the guarantee of good support. That is why, officials can use social media to change the image of some object, issue or even create the image of an enemy (Rainie, Smith, Lehman, Schlozman, Brady, & Sidney 2012). With this in mind, an important question of the independence of social media and its credibility appears. It should be determined whether the government controls the work of social media and uses it for its purposes or not (Wihbey 2015). Nowadays, people spend the majority of their time using the Internet for obtaining information, communication or just entertaining in social networks. Very seldom, the credibility of the information obtained from the Internet is doubted (Information Warfare: Automated Propaganda and Social Media Bots n.d.). That is why under modern conditions our topic obtains great significance as people should start thinking about the possibility of manipulations with the help of social media.

Brief description of the approaches

The majority of approaches which are used in this research paper are based on new digital technologies and the Internet. There are several reasons for this choice. First of all, the issue of the influence of social media on public opinion and a persons worldview should be investigated with the help of the Internet. Different social networks, websites or some databases can give us a great amount of information about this very issue. Moreover, with the development of social media more and more people start thinking about this issue and there should be some scientific researches or academic articles connected with investigations of the question of the influence of social media on public opinion. These articles can be found with the help of Google Scholar or some other libraries which contain information about academic journals and other works related to the issue. With this in mind, it is possible to say that almost all sources can be found on the Internet. Additionally, some discussion between users of social networks can be introduced for them do become involved in the issue and give their point of view on the problem.