Abstract (eng)
Social media have become a part of our everyday life: we can hardly imagine a day without checking our gadgets. The role and utilisation of social media have changed since their invention. We use them not only for communication and sharing pictures but also for getting new information, learning, and even for fundraising or organisation of different events, including even protests and political rallies. The social networks are present in various spheres of our lives and, therefore, influence their users in different ways. Since they have become an integral part of the society, they should influence it as well. For instance, the social media may be beneficial for the development of democracy and civil society. However, a lot of scholars concentrate on the negative side-effects of social media use. This master thesis, in its turn, is intended to examine the role, that the social media play in formation and development of civil society. The focus of the study is on the Ukrainian citizens and Ukrainian-speaking segment of socially important and politics-related pages on the Facebook. We have chosen Ukraine as the subject of this study since it is a country that went through the revolution in 2013-14 (when the Facebook also played quite a significant role). And, despite the war in the east of the country, it is now in the process of strengthening the democracy. The quantitative research conducted demonstrated that the regular visitors of the Facebook pages with certain political content, are, in average, have more active civic position, compared with those Facebook users, who do not consume political content. The formers are more likely to attend protest manifestations, participate in elections, hold discussions on important socio-political topics, and engage in charitable activities. They also are more involved and active Facebook users and demonstrate a higher level of readiness to proceed with fact-checking and source verification. It should be mentioned that the pages, which offer a more informative and well-reasoned content may have more influence, even if created in the infotainment format. Thus, this master thesis provides new findings concerning the regular consumption of political content on the Facebook and its potentially positive effect regarding the political involvement of users and their media literacy, which can lead to further consolidation of democracy. However, there is a room for more research into this topic.