2024/01/04 by Nihat Mugurtay, Ni̇hat Muğurtay, Umut Duygu +4 · 1 voice
Business, Management and Accounting · Computer Science · Social Sciences · #E-Government and Public Services #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies #Social Media and Politics #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) #cs.SI
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2401.02095
openalex publication_date 2024/01/04 · arxiv published 2024/01/04 · arxiv updated 2024/01/04 · openalex created_date 2024/01/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Why do Social Media Corporations (SMCs) engage in state-linked information operations? Social media can significantly influence the global political landscape, allowing governments and other political entities to engage in concerted information operations, shaping or manipulating domestic and foreign political agendas. In response to state-linked political manipulation tactics on social media, Twitter and Meta carried out take-down operations against propaganda networks, accusing them of interfering foreign elections, organizing disinformation campaigns, manipulating political debates and many other issues. This research investigates the two SMCs' policy orientation to explain which factors can affect these two companies' reaction against state-linked information operations. We find that good governance indicators such as democracy are significant elements of SMCs' country-focus. This article also examines whether Meta and Twitter's attention to political regime characteristics is influenced by international political alignments. This research illuminates recent trends in SMCs' take-down operations and illuminating interplay between geopolitics and domestic regime characteristics.