Crime and Social media

Purpose-The study complements the scant macroeconomic literature on the development outcomes of social media by examining the relationship between Facebook penetration and violent crime levels in a cross-section of 148 countries for the year 2012. Design/methodology/approach-The empirical evidence is based on Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Tobit and Quantile regressions. In order to respond to policy concerns on the limited evidence on the consequences of social media in developing countries, the dataset is disaggregated into regions and income levels. The decomposition by income levels included: low income, lower middle income, upper middle income and high income. The corresponding regions include: Europe and Central Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Findings-From OLS and Tobit regressions, there is a negative relationship between Facebook penetration and crime. However, Quantile regressions reveal that the established negative relationship is noticeable exclusively in the 90th crime decile. Further, when the dataset is decomposed into regions and income levels, the negative relationship is evident in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) while a positive relationship is confirmed for sub-Saharan Africa. Policy implications are discussed. Originality/value- Studies on the development outcomes of social media are sparse because of a lack of reliable macroeconomic data on social media. This study primarily complemented three existing studies that have leveraged on a newly available dataset on Facebook

Tourism and social media in the world: An empirical investigation

Tourism and social media in the world: An empirical investigationThe study examines the relationship between tourism and social media from a cross section of 138 countries with data for the year 2012.The empirical evidence is based on Ordinary Least Squares, Negative Binomial and Quantile regressions. Two main findings are established. First, there is a positive relationship between Facebook penetration and the number of tourist arrivals. Second, Facebook penetration is more relevant in promoting tourist arrivals in countries where initial levels in tourist arrivals are the highest and low. The established positive relationship can be elucidated from four principal angles: the transformation of travel research, the rise in social sharing, improvements in customer service and the reshaping of travel agencies. This study explores a new dataset on social media. There are very few empirical studies on the relevance of social media in development outcomes.Economic

Comportamiento ético de las empresas y corrupción en el sector público – un análisis de clústers de países a nivel mundial

In countries where corruption is high, there is less incentive for corporate organizations to behave ethically. Ethics, either in the private and public sectors, can be related to the level of economic development, economic freedom, and the quality of governance. The objective of this paper is to analyze the relationship between corporate ethics and corruption in the public sector, to group countries according to these indicators, and investigate the characteristics of these clusters. A hierarchical followed by a K-means cluster analysis was performed to group 127 countries. Non-parametric and post-hoc tests were used to examine the significant differences among clusters in some features. The correlation between the ethical behavior of firms and corruption in the public sector was strong and significant. The cluster analysis led to three significantly different clusters, one formed by countries with high levels of corporate ethics and low corruption and it is composed only by countries with high-income, another with medium levels and finally a group of countries with low levels of corporate ethics and high levels of corruption. The results also suggest significant differences among the clusters in several economic, institutional, and development indicators. Improving these indicators potentially lead to high standards of ethics in the private and public sectors.En los países donde la corrupción es elevada, hay menos incentivos para que las organizaciones empresariales se comporten éticamente. La ética, tanto en el sector privado como en el público, puede estar relacionada con el nivel de desarrollo económico, la libertad económica y la calidad de la gobernanza. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la relación entre la ética empresarial y la corrupción en el sector público, agrupar a los países según estos indicadores e investigar las características de estas clústers. Se realizó un análisis jerárquico seguido de un análisis de clústers de K-means para agrupar 127 países. Se utilizaron pruebas no paramétricas y post hoc para examinar las diferencias significativas entre clústers en algunas características. La correlación entre el comportamiento ético de las empresas y la corrupción en el sector público fue fuerte y significativa. El análisis de clústers dio lugar a tres clústers significativamente diferentes, uno formado por países con altos niveles de ética empresarial y baja corrupción y compuesto únicamente por países con altos rendimientos, otro con niveles medios y, por último, un grupo de países con bajos niveles de ética empresarial y altos niveles de corrupción. Los resultados también sugieren diferencias significativas entre los clústers en varios indicadores económicos, institucionales y de desarrollo. La mejora de estos indicadores puede conducir potencialmente a altos niveles de ética en los sectores público y privado.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Does electronic government deter corruption? Evidence from across the world

Electronic government innovations are one of the most important changes in public administration in recent years. Governments in many countries have implemented e-government policies to foster efficiency and transparency, and to mitigate corruption. This paper explores the effects of e-government on corruption using longitudinal data for more than 170 countries for the period 2002-2017. Empirical results strongly support the hypothesis that e-government can be used to deter corruption. This result is robust to alternative indicators of corruption and e-government, as well as to a variety of estimation techniques. A novelty of our research is that we analyse under which conditions is e-government more effective in reducing corruption. Quantile regressions indicate that the potential of e-government to deter corruption is higher between quantiles 0.3 to 0.8 of the corruption distribution. E-government also reveals to be a more effective corruption deterrent in countries that are not classified as high-income countries and that are not in the extremes of the freedom of the press variable distribution.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT

Terrorism and social media: global evidence

The study assesses the relationship between terrorism and social media from a cross section of 148 countries with data for the year 2012. The empirical evidence is based on Ordinary Least Squares, Negative Binomial and Quantile regressions. The main finding is that there is a positive relationship between social media in terms of Facebook penetration and terrorism. The positive relationship is driven by below-median quantiles of terrorism. In other words, countries in which existing levels of terrorism are low are more significantly associated with a positive Facebook-terrorism nexus. The established positive relationship is confirmed from other externalities of terrorism: terrorism fatalities, terrorism incidents, terrorism injuries and terrorism-related property damages. The terrorism externalities are constituents of the composite dependent variable

IT governance matter: A structured literature review

The aim of this paper is to critically explore information technology governance (ITG) context, its consequences, its various aspects, its determinants, disclosure, maturity, and challenges. There are some motivations that urge the researchers to carry out this study. First, the review of prior relevant literature reveals a limited number of studies addressing the IT governance context, its consequences, its various aspects, its determinants, and challenges. Second, very little is known about the potential implications of IT governance within the business and how it is significant to the decision-makers (e.g., shareholders, board of directors, executives, etc.). Finally, little research employs the structured literature review (SLR) approach to critically discuss and analyze the IT governance context with its various aspects. The systematic and structured literature review has been employed for a critical analysis of the previous studies on IT governance. It is found that effective ITG has a positive impact on the firm performance in consistent with Altemimi and Zakaria (2017), Hulme (2012). Additionally, it is concluded that there is a positive association between ITG, the trustworthiness and the level of financial disclosure agreeing with (Raghupathi, 2007; Ali & Green, 2007). It is also concluded that the level of ITG disclosure is higher within firms in Europe (67%) than in the US (49%) complementing with Joshi et al. (2013). The adoption of the SLR methodology enables this paper to derive unbiased empirical insights and critique into the current ITG research and to identify possible directions for future ITG research, which may possibly be of interest to the academics, regulators, and professional bodies (e.g., shareholders, board of directors, executives, etc.)

Social media and inclusive human development in Africa

This study investigates the relationship between social media and inclusive human development in 49 African countries for the year 2012. Social media is measured with Facebook penetration whereas inclusive human development is proxied by the inequality- adjusted human development index. The empirical evidence is based on Ordinary Least Squares, Tobit and Quantile regressions. Ordinary Least Squares provided baseline results, Tobit regressions account for the limited range in the outcome variable while Quantile regressions are engaged to control for initial levels of inequality-adjusted human development. From Ordinary Least Squares and Tobit results, Facebook penetration is positively associated with inclusive human development. Quantile regressions confirm this positive nexus and further establish that the positive association is slightly higher in magnitude in the above-median sub-sample. From a comparative assessment, it is apparent that with the exception of the resource-wealth sub-samples, higher levels of Facebook penetration are associated with comparatively higher levels of inclusive human development. Accordingly, the positive association between Facebook penetration and inclusive human development is: (i) a positive function of income levels and (ii) more apparent in Middle East and North African countries (compared to Sub-Saharan African countries), English common law countries (compared to their French civil law counterparts), and coastal countries (in relation to landlocked countries).Colleges of Economic and Management Science

Externalities in the rent-seeking strategies of lobbying and bribery

Studies investigating the relationship between lobbying and bribery are limited and contradictory. Some studies regard lobbying and bribery as substitutes while others consider them complementary strategies. Using congestion games this study attempts to clarify the externalities present in these rent-seeking strategies which generate complementarities between them. Lobbying cost-sharing and cooperation through business associations and congestion in benefits from competitive bribery are important sources of externalities. The theoretical model is then investigated empirically. The results indicate that lobbying and bribery are complementary strategies. However, as countries grow, lobbying will be used more intensely. The results also show that there is a positive externality in collective lobbying so that firms that cooperate can save on lobbying costs. There are also externalities in competitive bribery. The results show that the effects of social and legal punishments of bribery are considerable but become less severe as corruption becomes more widespread

Opinion Behavior Analysis in Social Networks Under the Influence of Coopetitive Media

Both interpersonal communication and media contact are important information sources and play a significant role in shaping public opinions of large populations. In this paper, we investigate how the opinion-forming process evolves over social networks under the media influence. In addition to being affected by the opinions of their connected peers, the media cooperate and/or compete mutually with each other. Networks with mixed cooperative and competitive interactions are said to be coopetitive . In this endeavor, a novel mathematical model of opinion dynamics is introduced, which captures the information diffusion process under consideration, makes use of the community-based network structure, and takes into account personalized biases among individuals in social networks. By employing port-Hamiltonian system theory to analyze the modeled opinion dynamics, we predict how public opinions evolve in the long run through social entities and find applications in political strategy science. A key technical observation is that as a result of the port-Hamiltonian formulation, the mathematical passivity property of individuals’ self-dynamics facilitates the convergence analysis of opinion evolution. We explain how to steer public opinions towards consensus, polarity, or neutrality, and investigate how an autocratic media coalition might emerge regardless of public views. We also assess the role of interpersonal communication and media exposure, which in itself is an essential topic in mathematical sociology

Social Media as a Source of Citizens\u27 Communicative Power: Relating Social Media Diffusion, E-participation, and Corruption

The utility of social media as an anti-corruption mechanism, although widely acknowledged, is less investigated, both empirically and theoretically. Accordingly, in this study, through a cross-country panel analysis and grounding our arguments on Habermas\u27s theory of democracy, we explore the relationships among social media diffusion, e-participation, and corruption, in addition to the evolution of these relationships over time. Our results indicate that social media diffusion has a positive relationship with e-participation, which, in turn, has a negative relationship with corruption. Further, results show that the strength of these relationships wanes over time. These findings can help policymakers make informed decisions regarding the strategies for controlling corruption by increasing social media diffusion and e-participation