Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Their Effects: The Birth of an Alert Society

Public opinion, once shaped by traditional media, is now influenced by a vast network of online voices. New platforms, such as blogs and, later, social media, have challenged the dominance of these outlets, creating a fragmented information landscape. Big data and AI play a growing role in analyzing public sentiment, personalizing content, and potentially creating online echo chambers that skew public opinion, shaping everything from personal decisions with no social impact to political decisions of great importance for society. The growing use of smartphones to access social networks and the shift to a push system, where information is delivered to consumers through alert systems, has transformed the network society into an alert society, presenting new opportunities and risks for democracies. Personalized information and data-driven policies have great potential in some areas, but they also trigger concerns about the misuse of data collected without users’ knowledge. Although data policies are increasingly restrictive, it is essential that permanent monitoring systems are in place to safeguard democratic processes.