Report Title: Social Media Revolution: Political and Security Implications
Rapporteur: Jane CORDY (Canada)
Year: 2017
The rise of social media is one of the most recent and far-reaching manifestations of the digital computing and communication revolution that marked the beginning of the post-industrial era (i.e., the Information Age) several decades ago. The proliferation of social media in recent years has been truly extraordinary –facilitated by the rapid growth in internet-enabled mobile devices (smartphones). For many across the globe, social media are a main news source; in 2016, 62% of US citizens got their news from social media sites–44% from Facebook alone (Gottfried and Shearer). Based on a survey of about 50,000 youth from across 26 countries, social media has already surpassed TV as the main source of information for that generation (Wakefield).
