Organizational Use of Social Networking in Employment Actions

This study examined federal court cases related to the use of social media websites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn) in various employment practices (e.g., selection, promotion, employee monitoring, layoffs). Court cases were identified using various online databases in an attempt to create an exhaustive list of cases to be used to better understand the role that social media has played in organizational settings and the legal implications of its use. The results of this study show that there were a significant number of cases involving termination and Facebook, and organizations prevailed in court significantly more than the defendant did. The results of this study provide organizations, employees, and applicants with a better understanding of how organizational social media use has been perceived in the court of law, thereby allowing people and employers to make better decisions regarding social media use

Three Research Essays on Propensity to Disclose Medical Information Through Formal and Social Information Technologies

Abstract This dissertation, which is comprised of three essays, examined disclosure propensity of healthcare providers from the US and Thailand and disclosure of personal health problems of healthcare consumers in social media context. Essay 1: A Deterrence Approach in Medical Data Misuse among Healthcare Providers Information and communication technology (ICT) have long been available for use in health care. With the potential to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of health care, the diffusion of these technologies has steadily increased in the health care industry. With the adoption of electronic health records, personal electronics devices, internet connections and social network connections, comes the increased risk of medical data breaches. Due to the sensitivity of the information involved, and the existence of laws governing the use of this data, the responsibilities of a healthcare provider after a data breach remain a concern. Based on previous breach reports, institutional insiders were among the leading causes of medical data breaches. The causes were related to unawareness of institutional information security policies and system misuse. Thus it has become important to understand how to reduce such behaviors. Previous studies suggested deterrence theory that relies on security countermeasures can deter individuals\u27 misuse behaviors by increasing the perceived threat of punishment. Thus our model posits that security countermeasures decrease medical data misuse through the two mediators; perceived certainty of sanctions and perceived severity of sanctions. This model was tested by 176 healthcare providers from different institutions across the US. The results suggested that perceived severity of sanctions has more effect in reducing medical data misuse than perceived certainty of sanctions. Hospital information security policies and HIPAA has stronger effect on perceived severity of sanctions than perceived certainty of sanctions whereas EHR monitoring and auditing has stronger effect on perceived certainty of sanctions than perceived severity of sanctions. Results of the study and implications for the research are discussed. Essay 2: Propensity to Misuse Medical Data in an International Context - Deterrence and Cultural Values As information abuse by healthcare providers is a problem that is faced around the globe, our study examined the effect of deterrence within two cultures; Asian and American (Thailand and the US). The reason to compare these two countries is because the foundation of the structures of the laws and the hospital policies for medical data protection of these two countries are similar. Thus others confounding factors are minimized. In terms of cultural influences, Hofstede\u27s cultural dimensions that describe the effects of society\u27s culture on the values to its members are considered as factors that can have an interaction effect with deterrence. Four Hofstede\u27s cultural values were used; individualism-collectivism (IDV); uncertainty avoidance (UAI); power distance (PD); and long-term orientation (LTO). Also, social norms and morality were included. This study employed espoused values of Hofstede\u27s cultural values, since all individuals from a country will not have identical values. In this study, we examined 1) the effect of espoused cultural values on deterrence, and 2) the effect of Hofstede\u27s national cultural values on deterrence in two different healthcare cultures. Our model was tested by 613 healthcare providers; 437 from Thailand and 176 from the US. The results suggested that technical countermeasures had stronger effect on certainty and severity perception for both Thai and US cases, whereas procedural countermeasures had uncertain effect on sanctions perception for both cultures. The young generation of Thais was found more individualized and tended to have the same perception on sanctions as the Westerners. Social norms played an important role in reducing medical data misuse for Thai providers, whereas moral beliefs were more important for the US providers. Individuals who espoused different cultural values had different responses on medical data misuse. Results of the study and implications for the research are discussed. Essay 3: Intention to self-disclose personal health information in social media context In recent years social media is quickly becoming a large part of people\u27s everyday lives. With the availability of smartphones and tablets, coupled with a slew of apps for these devices, people now have ubiquitous access to social media. Virtual social media application encourages people to meet, and share information. Health problems represent one aspect that is shared in a social media context. Benefits and risks of self-disclosure are two main factors that determine social media users\u27 intention to share their sensitive information on social network. This paper integrates social exchange theory, a theory that focuses on gains and losses of building a relationship, and the social penetration theory, a theory that explains human\u27s self-disclosure, to construct the model for investigating self-disclosure intention on personal health problems of social medial users. In addition, we included factors that affect self-disclosure intention including ease of use of social media, social influence, and nature of health problems. Through an online survey, we examined factors that determine self-posting in social media account with 374 social media users across the US. The results suggested that individual and social benefits of self- disclosure outweighed the risks and have significant effect on self-disclosure intention on personal health problems. The individual risks and social risks had little negative effect on self-posting about health problems. In addition, social influence, and social networking experiences were factors that encouraged social media users to reveal their personal health problems

Unfriend, Unfollow, Unsubscribe: Unsociability on social network sites

Social network sites (SNSs) are virtual spaces for social activity where users can “undo” their social interactions, returning to a previous system state. In this thesis I study this “reversed” sociability – unsociability – as a novel way to approach and support online social interactions. Using focus groups as research method, I explore the practices and perceptions of users engaging in unsocial events over four popular SNSs: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. As focus groups enable people to discuss their opinions in a relaxed yet moderated environment, I gathered opinions of participants expressed in their own terms. Subsequently, I used two data analysis techniques, content analysis and grounded theory, to explore participants’ utterances and group dynamics. The results show that the structure of each site reviewed is determinant to understanding how they support unsociability. Most notably, it was found that people follow a social-over-technical pattern on Facebook, as they base their interactions on their social understanding of this site instead of its technical capabilities. By following this pattern, people engage in unsocial events to save face and regulate their privacy boundaries. I found that people try to keep their unsocial behaviors as positive as possible to reduce accountability for these behaviors. Consequently, they prefer using features that place a self-boundary around them, which I call the soft unsocial features. The hard unsocial features place a dyadic boundary, producing increased social costs. Nevertheless, different people interpret these features in different ways, as I found three distinctive attitude styles towards them: the experimental, cautious, and restrictive. As these platforms become ubiquitous, I argue that unsociability should become an important consideration for designers of SNSs. I propose that SNSs should offer integrated options to revert social interactions in a silent, easy, and flexible way, to support users to “reverse” the increased sociability enabled on these sites. Asiasanat:social network sites, features, unsociability, desig

The Academic Use of WhatsApp and Technostress: Investigating the Experience of Fatigue and Coping Behaviours among University Students

The use of mobile instant messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, WeChat and Facebook messengers, has grown remarkably in recent years. WhatsApp is one of the most adopted mobile messaging apps, with two billion users worldwide. Due to its popularity among students, WhatsApp is being increasingly adopted for learning purposes in higher education. WhatsApp can provide students with various benefits that facilitate online learning and knowledge exchanges. However, despite these benefits, using WhatsApp can also have negative effects for students and their well-being. Research has demonstrated that the excessive use and heavy reliance on information and communication technology (ICT) can lead to technostress, a phenomenon that refers to the stress experienced by individuals due to the use of ICT. Thus, although WhatsApp offers students an effortless and fast means for communication and information sharing, the use of WhatsApp for academic and non-academic-related purposes can create fatigue for students. Research indicates that university students are vulnerable to different sources of stress including academic stressors. With the increased use of mobile technology for learning, students could face an additional source of academic stress caused by the educational use of technology. While there has been a growing interest in studying the educational benefits of using mobile instant messaging, there is still a lack of understanding around its negative effects on students and their academic performance. Addressing this issue becomes important given the consequences of technostress on individuals. The current study, therefore, aims to shed light on the negative aspects of the educational use of WhatsApp. Using the transactional model of stress and coping, the study seeks to explore factors that cause fatigue among university students when using WhatsApp for learning purposes and investigate students’ coping behaviours to reduce fatigue. The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, a qualitative exploratory study was conducted to identify the main reasons for the experience of fatigue and to understand coping behaviours. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 21 students. The findings of the interviews were used to guide the development of the conceptual research model. In the second phase, a cross-sectional survey approach was used to examine the proposed research model. The data were collected via online questionnaires from 1,188 students between March and April 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown. The data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. The participants in both phases were undergraduate students at a public university in Saudi Arabia. The findings suggest that a consequence of using WhatsApp for learning purposes is that students suffer from fatigue, which leads to the perception of decreased performance. The reasons for the experience of fatigue were information overload, communication overload, distraction, and invasion of privacy. Students engaged in two main coping strategies in order to deal with stressors and fatigue: disturbance handling, and self-preservation strategies. The findings also revealed that during the shift to remote learning, students faced technostress mainly because of the increased adoption of ICT for teaching and learning, a high level of technology dependence, increased communication and an increase of academic work, particularly group-based work which required the use of WhatsApp and other ICT. Overall, this study extends existing technostress and coping research by examining technology-related stressors and coping behaviours in the context of the educational use of WhatsApp. The findings of the current study provide insights and guidelines for decision-makers, educators and institutions in higher education with regard to the use of mobile instant messaging in education. Understanding fatigue associated with academic use and coping strategies to deal with fatigue can help students to reduce techno-stressors, thus enhancing the effectiveness of mobile learning via WhatsApp

Job seeking and job application in social networking sites : predicting job seekers\u27 behavioral intentions

Social networking sites (SNSs) are revolutionizing the way in which employers and job seekers connect and interact with each other. Despite the reported benefits of SNSs with respect to finding a job, there are issues such as privacy concerns that might be deterring job seekers from using these sites in their attempts to secure a job. It is therefore important to understand the factors that are salient in predicting job seekers\u27 use of SNSs in applying for jobs. In this research, a theoretical model was developed to explicate job seekers\u27 intentions to use SNSs to apply for jobs. Two aspects of intentions to use SNSs to apply for jobs were examined: (i) the likelihood of using these sites to submit applications, and (ii) the likelihood of sharing personal information requested by recruiters and potential employers using SNSs to recruit employees. Factors that could determine preference for the use of traditional job boards over SNSs in applying for jobs were also investigated. The initial theoretical model tested in this research was anchored on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), and thus, variables such as performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence were predicted to have an impact on job seekers\u27 intentions. Other factors hypothesized as having an influence on job seekers\u27 intentions to apply for jobs using SNSs were: privacy concerns; perceived justice (trust that the information revealed in SNSs will be used fairly in the job candidate selection process); perceived risks; and the provision of information on a distinctive function within some SNSs referred to, in this study, as the inside connections feature (which illustrates to job seekers their social network connections to potential employers). Data for this study were gathered through an online survey from 490 registered users (alumni and students hoping to graduate soon) of career services databases managed by two universities in New Jersey, USA. The test of the measurement model of the initial research model suggested that survey respondents did not sufficiently distinguish performance expectancy from intention to apply for jobs using SNSs. Thus, an alternative model with only intention to share information with recruiters and potential employers using SNSs to recruit employees as the dependent variable was developed. The results of the test of the alternative model suggest that performance expectancy and privacy concerns are the most dominant direct predictors, and that social influence specific to image and perceived justice are indirect predictors. However, effort expectancy and risk beliefs did not influence directly the intention to share information with recruiters and potential employers using SNSs to recruit employees. The R2 value for this alternative model was 37.3%. Exploratory analyses suggest that all of the model variables, except the provision of information on the inside connections feature, have a significant influence on intention to apply for job using SNSs and preference for job boards over SNSs. The results of this study suggest that, in efforts to encourage the use of SNSs for securing a job, designers should pay significantly more attention to promoting the usefulness of these sites and to providing job seekers with more control in handling their personal information in order to alleviate privacy concerns. This study provides insights into predictors of job seekers\u27 behavior in SNSs that can inform future research