Digital globalization and its impact on economic and social life

Research background: While some researchers see digital globalization as a new form of globalization, others liken digitalisation to the globalization that needs to be managed and driven so that institutions and businesses can meet the challenge of digitalisation together. Digitization has encompassed all aspects of economic and social life. In increasingly fierce competition, technological advances and the challenges of science are becoming catalysts for globalization. There is research that suggests that conventional wisdom would say that globalization has stopped arguing that global trade in goods has flattened and cross-border capital flows have fallen sharply since the economic crisis of 2008. However, research shows that globalization is not reversing but enters a new phase that could be defined by a sustained increase in data and information flows. More than a decade later, the new global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is strengthening the role of information and communication technologies in both the economy and social life. Purpose of the article: The aim of this paper is to highlight the main characteristics of digital globalization that have a major impact on current and future economic and social life. Methods: Documentary analysis and review of the literature are the main research methods. These are doubled by a bibliographic analysis of IT tools. Findings & Value added: Following the documentary analysis, we identified a series of characteristics that allow us to consider that global digitalization can become the determining factor of the economy with direct implications in social life.