The Influence of Media Manipulation on Young People Through the Dimension of Their Perception and Understanding of Media Content in The Digital Environment

Manipulation in the media is present today as never before and, due to digital dissemination of information, it has become extremely accessible to the public. It is precisely the presence of new media and digital environment that has created a space for publicly available information to be created and released to the public by people who do not possess expertise, which directly calls into question not only the quality of the information, but its credibility as well. The digital age has also brought the presence of a number of media outlets in the form of web portals and social networks that daily disseminate a multitude of information, which is usually not backed by relevant sources and, not uncommonly, the published articles are not signed, while the portals that publish them do not even have an imprint. All of the above opens the possibility of media manipulation, to which especially young people are exposed. The posting of unreliable and manipulative information on social networks is positioned as a problem, among which Tik-Tok is the most prevalent today, with the dominant consumers of TikTok content being young people. The paper discusses the influence of media manipulation on the public, especially on young people through the dimension of their perception of content disseminated on social networks, especially on the TikTok platform. We look at whether and what consequences manipulation in the media produces among young people and how much it affects the changing of opinions and attitudes of young people. The aim of the work is to answer the question of how much young people today recognize media manipulation and how susceptible they are to it, through direct research questions on whether TikTok content can influence young people's perception of themselves and of others, i.e. influence young people's attitudes and beliefs. The paper also contains a quantitative survey in which respondents aged 16-20 answered previously defined research questions through the dimension of the way they use social networks, especially the TikTok network, and recognize content that contains manipulation.