Social Media as an Opinion Formulator: A Study on Implications and Recent Developments

Social media has a great influence on how information reaches us and how we form an opinion based on it. For many users, social media increases the variety of information and ensure its accessibility across different platforms. However, recent years have seen an exponential increase in the power of social media. Most often, the forwarding and sharing of journalistic articles serve the recommendation from the user's point of view, but recently, these platforms have been developed into an echo chamber to transport additional information or even a critical attitude. In addition, the uncontrolled influx of social media in different parts of the world favors phenomena such as fake news and social bots. These threaten the exchange of views sought by mutual understanding and sincerity that democratic societies need. Motivated by these observations, this article aims to paint a realistic picture of the impact of social media. To do so, we discuss the recent developments and social changes and provide analysis of the global impact of the connected audience. Next, we shed light on some of the opinion formulation procedures and its key enablers. Finally, we present an explanatory discussion on the Facebook algorithms and provide two case studies in the wake of recent global events.