Digitalization of the Economy: the New Role of Social Media

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of social networks, the role of which is constantly growing in the context of the digitalization of the economy. The Internet has become an important prerequisite for their spread. If at the beginning of 1990, even in the most developed countries, less than 1% of the population used the Internet, then by 2020 the level of its prevalence in North America and Western Europe exceeded 90%, and in the countries of East, Southeast and West Asia, and Latin America has exceeded 2/3. We live in a rapidly changing world, when the number of active Internet users exceeded 4.66 billion people in early 2021. The speed of obtaining information is currently an important factor in economic activity. Therefore, contacts are growing rapidly, which is reflected in e-mail, which has become an integral part of modern life, pushing far back other forms of communication (newspapers, mail, telegraph, etc.). The rapid acceleration of conflicting information increases the risk of decision-making, many of which must be made in the face of uncertainty. With the growth of social networks, the density of contacts increases and the importance of a fuller use of network benefits increases. Not only is the number of participants changing, but so is the quantity and quality of the most popular websites. Citizens of modern states are more informed than their previous generations. Conducting an electoral system under such conditions turns out to be a task with many unknowns. In these conditions, voting manipulation takes on new features, which were clearly manifested during the American presidential campaigns in the United States in 2008, 2012, 2016. In addition, opportunities are being created to improve the quality of public finance management by increasing the openness of budgeting at the federal and regional levels, that is, the actual implementation of the Vernon Smith auction in practice, which will be an important step in the formation of a genuine civil society.