During the last two decades, we see an inverse correlation between a country’s deliberative democracy rating and how often politicians spread false information or misleading viewpoints on social media.

#Comparing decline in deliberative democracy among the bottom 40 countries in the world: 
dem_slide = vdem %>% filter(year == 2000 | year == 2010 | year == 2020) %>%
            dplyr::select(country_name, year, v2x_polyarchy) %>%
              spread(key = year, value = v2x_polyarchy) %>%
                mutate(d_diff = `2020` - `2000`) %>%
                  arrange(d_diff)
top_40 = dem_slide[1:40,]
worst_change40 = top_40$country_name

#USA dataframe
usa = vdem %>% filter(country_name == "United States of America" & (year %in% 2000:2021)) %>%
  dplyr::select(country_name, year, v2smpardom, v2x_delibdem)

#Creating USA label
usa_text = data.frame(v2smpardom = 1.8, v2x_delibdem = .70, lab = "USA", year = 2000:2021)


#Plotting graphs

countries2 = vdem %>% filter(country_name %in% worst_change40 & ( year %in% 2000:2021)) %>%
            dplyr::select(country_name, year, v2smpardom, v2x_delibdem)


p = ggplot(countries2, aes(label = country_name, x = v2smpardom, y = v2x_delibdem, frame = year)) + 
              geom_point(alpha =.6, color = "dodgerblue3") +
              geom_point(data = usa, aes(x = v2smpardom, y = v2x_delibdem, frame=year), color = "red", size = 3, shape = 15 ) +
              scale_x_reverse(labels = c('Extremely Often', 'Often', 'About half the time', 'Rarely', 'Never, or almost never'), limits = c(3,-3)) +
              geom_text(data = usa, aes(x = v2smpardom, y = v2x_delibdem, frame=year), label = "USA", color = "red", fontface = "bold", nudge_x = .1, nudge_y = .1) +
              geom_vline(xintercept = 0, color = "grey") + 
              geom_hline(yintercept = .5, color = "grey") +
              theme_bw() +
              theme(
                    plot.title = element_text(face = "bold", size = 10, hjust = 0.5),
                    plot.subtitle = element_text(face = "plain", size = 15, hjust = 0.5),
                    plot.caption = element_text(face = "plain", size = 8),
                    plot.background = element_rect(fill = "cornsilk1"),
                    legend.background = element_rect(fill = "cornsilk1"), 
                    panel.grid.major = element_blank()) +
              labs(title = "Democracy Weakens as Politicians Use Social Media\nto Spread False and Misleading Information",
                   subtitle = "USA is among the 40 Countries with Worst Deliberative Democratic Decline from 2000 to 2021",
                   x = "How often major political parties and candidates use social media to spread false information",
                   y = "Deliberative Democracy Rating")
## Warning: Ignoring unknown aesthetics: frame
## Ignoring unknown aesthetics: frame
ggplotly(p)
## Warning: `gather_()` was deprecated in tidyr 1.2.0.
## ℹ Please use `gather()` instead.
## ℹ The deprecated feature was likely used in the plotly package.
##   Please report the issue at <]8;;https://github.com/plotly/plotly.R/issueshttps://github.com/plotly/plotly.R/issues]8;;>.