Digital Democracy — Do Social Media Steer Opinion Formation?

Abstract

With the spread of social media in recent years there has been growing concern about their e ects on opinion formation. Key suspects are fake news, radical content, and algorithms that mostly show users what they are already thinking, among others. Accordingly, researchers have worked on numerous studies that investigate the e ects of social media on democracy and its members. This compact overview focuses on opinion formation on the level of individual users. Opinion formation is the fundamental basis of democracy as a person’s opinion on political, social, or economic issues directly feeds into their voting behavior. The results of elections and referendums in turn determine which people or parties will make decisions during the next legislative period — decisions that are generally binding. If social media a ect this process, it should be clear whether users, for example, no longer perceive di erent opinions or become ever more radical in their own worldviews.