The Importance of the Internet in Forming of the Public Opinion and its Indispensability for Contemporary Economy: An Online Survey

Abstract

The presence of the Internet in everyday life of a significant part of the world’s population has become a reality. Among the younger populations in developed countries and emerging economies, as well as in the respectable number of developing countries, the permeability of the Internet (as well as mobile networks, thereby giving access to the Internet practically permanently) has reached well over 70 percent or in some cases close to 100 percent. Social networks have become an omnipresent aspect of life for hundreds of millions of people. Digital economy has enabled “the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, as current development in business that is performed dominantly or exclusively over the Internet is often referred to. Aware of these developments, we have decided to perform an online survey (the choice of the type of survey and the media serves as a pointer of the importance of the Internet) about the different aspects of the Internet use, mainly focusing on the importance of the Internet for receiving information, forming of opinions and attitudes, as well as its importance for certain business activities and/or performing everyday duties at some person’s job. We have used Google form as a survey method, combining single and multiple choice questions, as well as one question with Likert scale, and guaranteed the anonymity of the responders by not collecting their e-mail addresses. We have shared our questionnaire on Facebook and via e-mail, and kindly asked our Facebook friend as well as our colleagues to share it further. Certain questions were used as test questions, to show the importance and power of the social networks contrary to the “traditional” way of sharing data, such as e- mail. We conclude that, despite their clearly shown ubiquity and importance, the Internet and social networks, still have a lot of space for spreading, especially among the middle aged and elderly population.

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