SOCIAL MEDIA TAKES A TOLL ON DEMOCRACY

Typically, crisis spur when political systems reach a standstill, when all resources are finished and the last option that could get the government out of the struggle is military force. As history has shown, this is not the best way out. Crisis and conflicts are the motion power of permanent transformation of international interaction. They have all impacted mostly civilian population through numerous casualties and refugees that determined humanitarian efforts, thus crisis resolution and conflict mediation becoming one of most important concern in security. The post-Cold War world gave means and opportunity for states to try and assert their global influence through peaceful means, remotely control the ex-soviet countries through economic and energetic domination and influence western countries with a set of strategies that define hybrid warfare aimed at the core of its adversaries' source of political power, at population. This paper will analyse how social media is weaponised to achieve political gain over recent elections as a part of an effective toolset aimed at influencing public scrutiny. The purpose of this article is to establish if turning social media into a means of control over the population is a part of a greater operation to generate popular misperception and increase one actor's power, or it represents the new age exertion of soft power beyond privacy rights and international regulation.