Opinion Power and Diversity of Opinion in Traditional and Modern Information Intermediaries

Proceedings of The 4th International Conference on Future of Social Sciences

Year: 2021

DOI:

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Opinion Power and Diversity of Opinion in Traditional and Modern Information Intermediaries

Paulina Schindler, Johannes Ruhland

ABSTRACT: 

New forms of information intermediaries have developed from traditional to modern with the emergence of the Internet. There are some differences between them. Since the influence of intermediaries on opinion power and diversity of opinion is a socially relevant topic, these aspects are compared for traditional and modern information intermediaries from an international perspective. Four subcategories are examined in detail for both categories. Opinion power is divided in recipients, availability of alternative information sources using intermediaries, content selection process and transparency concerning the selection of content. The subcategories of diversity of opinion are amount of content creators, amount of content published, accepted diversity of presented content and content selection criteria. A simple, point-based scoring system visualizes the perceived strength of change. The hypothesis that there is at least moderate change in both categories can be confirmed. Both categories show a strong level of change, especially because of the following strong rated subcategories: recipients, availability of alternative information sources using intermediaries, content selection process (opinion power), amount of content creators and amount of content published (diversity of opinion). Thus, strong changes have taken place in opinion power and diversity from traditional to modern information intermediaries.

keywords: comparison; content; creators; recipients; scoring.