Social Network and Privacy

Whiles some use the internet basically for commerce, other use for educational purposes whiles to others, it is all about entertainment. The internet can therefore be likened to a blank check, which serves different purposes as and how a person wants to define it. The user variety of the internet notwithstanding, recent studies have actually confirmed that an aspect of internet usage that seem to have caught up with over 70% of all internet users is the phenomenon of social media networking (Compaine and Gomery, 2011). The research paper was conducted with the aim of finding the privacy risks associated with the use of social networking sites and for the practice of social media networking. To realize this aim, five major objectives were set, based on which research questions were developed. The research questions became a guide for the researcher to collect primary and secondary data, with particular emphasis on primary data collection, where a questionnaire was prepared for 50 respondents selected from a university campus. All 50 respondents were users of social networking sites and had strong academic background in journalism and communication, putting them in a position to provid well informed answers to the questions to the respondent. The primary data collection emphasized largely on the attitude of the respondents towards privacy issues whiles using social networking sites. The primary data collection exercise was also committed to knowing the depth of knowledge on privacy issues with social media networks. Through secondary data collection also, the researcher had the opportunity of knowing what the hosts of social networking sites are doing to protect the privacy of users

Social Relationships, Depression and BMI in Older Irish Adults

Older adults’ social relationships influence both mental and physical health outcomes, and reciprocal influences between loneliness and depression have been demonstrated over time. Social and mental health are both important considerations for Ireland’s ageing population. Obesity represents another public health concern among the ageing population, and is also associated with depression. ‘Social relationships’ is an umbrella term that encompasses both subjective relationship measures such as loneliness and relationship quality, and objective relationship measures such as participation and social network connectedness. This thesis aims to describe the prevalence of social relationships, depression and BMI in older Irish adults, and to investigate the interactions and reciprocal influences between these variables. Analysis includes comparison of influences of subjective and objective social relationship measures on depression and BMI, and uses multiple measures from wave 1 and wave 2 of the Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing (TILDA)