Usage and Consequences of Privacy Settings in Microblogs

Twitter facilitates borderless communication, informing us about real-life events and news. To address privacy needs, Twitter provides various security settings. However, users with protected profiles are limited to their friendship circles and thus might have less visibility from outside of their networks. Previous research on privacy reveals information leakage and security threats in social networks despite of privacy protection enabled. In this context, could protecting microblogging content be counterproductive for individual users? Would microbloggers use Twitter more effectively when opening their content for everyone rather than protecting their profiles? Are user profile protection features necessary? We wanted to address this controversy by studying how microbloggers exploit privacy and geo-location setting controls. We followed a set of user profiles during half of year and compared their usage of Twitter features including status updates, favorites, being listed, adding friends and follower contacts. Our findings revealed that protecting user accounts is not always detrimental to exploiting the main microblogging features. Additionally, we found that users across geographic regions have different privacy preferences. Our results enable us to get insights into privacy issues in microblogs, underlining the need of respecting user privacy in microblogs. We suggest to further research user privacy controls usage in order to understand user goals and motivations for sharing and disclosing their microblogging data online with the focus on user cultural origins

Cultural differences in social media use, privacy, and self-disclosure : research report on a multicultural study

This research report presents comparative results from five nations (United States of America, United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and China) with regard to social media use, self-disclosure, privacy perceptions and attitudes, and privacy behavior in online environments. The data stemmed from an online survey that was conducted from November, 2011, to December, 2011. Across all five nations, N = 1,800 participants completed the survey. The findings suggest that a broad differentiation between Western and Eastern cultures only partly accounted for differences in social media use and privacy behavior. Rather, the results of this report suggest that European countries (United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands) share similar privacy perceptions and show similar behavioral patterns. Non-European cultures (the USA and China) on the other hand, use social media differently. Participants from European countries had generally smaller audiences on social network sites and microblogging platforms, tended to limit the visibility of their postings and profile information more, and used more privacy settings to safeguard their privacy. In particular, German social media users seemed to be guarded, protective, and rather reluctant to participate in online communication. Users from the US, on the other hand, rated privacy-related behavior as less risky and were hence less likely to imply sophisticated privacy strategies. Apart from these findings, the report also shows that there are more commonalities than differences. People from all five countries think that it is important to protect privacy. Most users consciously decides what to share and what not to share. Accordingly, social media users do not always share intimate and detailed information about their lives

Social Media: the Wild West of CSR Communications

Purpose - The central argument that this paper posits is that traditional media of old presented a clear, ordered world of communication management for organisations to extol their CSR credentials. In contrast to this, new Web 2.0 social media is increasingly being used by activists and hactivists to challenge corporate communication CSR messages and does so by highlighting instances and examples of Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSI) (Jones, Bowd and Tench, 2009; Tench, Sun and Jones, 2012). Design/methodology/approach - The paper reports on research data from the European Communication Monitor 2010, 2011 and 2012 (http://www.communicationmonitor.eu/) and draws on work already published in this area (Tench, Verhoeven and Zerfass, 2009; Verhoeven et al, 2012; and Zerfass et al, 2010, 2011) to illustrate the unruly unregulated Web 2.0 social media communication landscape in Europe. A range of literature is drawn on to provide the theoretical context for an exploration of issues that surround social media. Findings - In late modernity (Giddens, 1990) communication comes in many guises. Social media is one guise and it has re-shaped as well as transformed the nature of communications and the relationship between organisations and their stakeholders. Originality/value - Communicating CSR in the Wild West of social media requires diplomatic and political nous, as well as awareness and knowledge of the dangers and pitfalls of CSI. The data reported on in this paper illustrates well the above points and sets out scenarios for future development of corporate communication of CSR through, and with social media

Mining microblogs for culture-awareness in web adaptation

Prior studies in sociology and human-computer interaction indicate that persons from different countries and cultural origins tend to have their preferences in real-life communication and the usage of web and social media applications. With Twitter data, statistical and machine learning tools, this study advances our understand ing of microblogging in respect of cultural differences and demonstrates possible solutions of inferring and exploiting cultural origins for building adaptive web ap plications. Our findings reveal statistically significant differences in Twitter feature usage in respect of geographic locations of users. These differences in microblogger behaviour and user language defined in user profiles enabled us to infer user country origins with an accuracy of more than 90%. Other user origin predictive solutions we proposed do not require other data sources and human involvement for training the models, enabling the high accuracy of user country inference when exploiting information extracted from a user followers’ network, or with data derived from Twitter profiles. With origin predictive models, we analysed communication and privacy preferences and built a culture-aware recommender system. Our analysis of friend responses shows that Twitter users tend to communicate mostly within their cultural regions. Usage of privacy settings showed that privacy perceptions differ across cultures. Finally, we created and evaluated movie recommendation strategies considering user cultural groups, and addressed a cold-start scenario with a new user. We believe that the findings discussed give insights into the sociological and web research, in particular on cultural differences in online communication

Social Media Adoption Among University Instructors In Saudi Arabia

There is an orientation from the government of Saudi Arabia toward social media in general. The government of Saudi Arabia considers the significance of social media in educating the Saudi community. The Saudi Ministry of Education founded the National Center for E- Learning and Distance Learning (NCeL) because it considered the importance of e-learning and distance learning for higher education (he.moe.gov.sa). NCeL supports and rewards university instructors to integrate social media in the learning process (award.elc.edu.sa). Several studies proved the significance of social media with Saudi higher education students (Alkhalifa, 2008; Salem and Alghamdi, 2011; Almadhouni, 2011). Moreover, Saudi students indicated positive attitudes toward social media in their learning and would prefer attending classes that university instructors use social media (Aifan, 2015). However, the adoption of social media for teaching students by university instructors in Saudi Arabia is unclear. A questionnaire was built based on Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory for the study purpose. 387 university instructors from all of the 28 Saudi public universities responded to the questionnaire. 47.5% of the participants were male university instructors, while 51.7% were female university instructors. .8% of the participants preferred not to disclose their gender. 130 47.8% of the participants were 35 years old or below, 29.2% were between 36-45 years old, and 17.8% were 46years old and more. The results of this cross-sectional descriptive study that the Knowledge stage was the highest stage that university instructors have identified themselves with the stages of the innovation-decision, followed by Decision stage, Persuasion stage, Confirmation stage, and Implementation stage. The findings of this study imply that the perceived relative advantage and compatibility of using social media in teaching students may increase university instructors (in general and for all ages) future adoption decision of using social media in teaching students. Moreover, the findings of this study imply that the perceived relative advantage of using social media in teaching students may increase female university instructors’ future adoption decision of using social media in teaching students, whereas the perceived compatibility of using social media in teaching students may increase male university instructors’ future adoption decision of using social media in teaching students. Finally, the findings of this study imply that the perceived complexity, trialability, and observability of using social media in teaching students may have no influence on increasing university instructors’ future adoption decision of using social media in teaching students

Young people's views regarding participation in mental health and wellbeing research through social media

Social media is a central component in the lives of many young people, and provides innovative potential to conduct research among this population. Ethical issues around online research have been subject to much debate, yet young people have seldom been consulted to provide a youth perspective and voice. Eight (8) focus groups involving 48 Grade 9 Western Australian secondary school students aged 13-14 years were held in 2012, to investigate how young people perceive the feasibility and acceptability of social media when used as a research tool to investigate various issues relevant to their mental health and wellbeing. Whilst young people recognise many benefits of researchers using social media in this way, such as its relevance, innovation and accessibility, there were salient issues of privacy, consent, and practicality that require careful negotiation. There is a need for continued exploration and scientific debate of the moral and ethical implications of using social media for research, to help ensure this is employed in an appropriate and effective way that is respectful of and sensitive to the needs and views of young peoplepeer-reviewe

Exploring Undergraduate Perceptions of Meaning Making and Social Media in their Learning

Those concerned with teaching and learning in higher education and the Net generation’s perspectives on and uses of technology must address calls to move beyond the digital native debate (Bennett & Maton, 2010; Kennedy, Judd, Dalgarno, & Waycott, 2010) by asking students directly what they see as a meaningful part of their learning. This study aims to move beyond the digital native debate by developing research-informed understandings of the ways in which Net generation students may perceive technologies, specifically social media, to be a meaningful part of their undergraduate learning. The research questions guiding this study include: (RQ1) In what ways do undergraduate learners from different disciplines view social media to be a meaningful part of their university learning? (RQ2) What characteristics of social media do undergraduate learners see as contributing to their meaning making during their university learning? This study uses a social constructivist approach, thereby employing two main premises: learners actively construct their own knowledge, and social interactions are an important part of knowledge construction (Woolfolk, Winne, Perry, & Shapka, 2010, pp. 343-344). The research design is a mixed methods research (MMR) methodology, a methodological approach where a combination of methods is intentionally used to best address the research questions (Creswell, 2008; Creswell, 2015). This study’s MMR design involved a first phase qualitative component of intensive, semi-structured interviews with 30 undergraduate students enrolled in full-time studies at the University of Alberta, a large, Canadian, research-intensive university – with ten students from each of the three disciplinary areas of 1) humanities and social sciences, 2) health sciences, and 3) natural sciences and engineering, analyzed using a generic qualitative approach (Merriam, 2009) incorporating constructivist grounded theory techniques (Charmaz, 2014). The second phase quantitative component was comprised of undergraduate students across disciplines with survey responses (N = 679) regarding their perspectives on and uses of social media technology in their university learning. This phase included two pilot surveys conducted before the final survey was distributed to ensure the reliability and validity of the instrument developed. Survey responses were collected electronically via SurveyMonkey, and analyzed via descriptive statistics. The findings in this study shed new insights into student perspectives and uses of social media, and the variety of ways in which undergraduates intentionally chose (or, chose not) to incorporate social media into their university learning in meaningful ways. The interviews provide a detailed picture of undergraduate perspectives regarding the specific ways in which social media can help and hinder learning, comprising what students consider as a double-edged sword. Student perspectives and descriptions formed key recurring themes, which emerged into several core characteristics of social media, as well as core categories of meaning making in undergraduate university learning. Within the qualitative interviews and the open-ended survey results, there is an overarching theme of social media as a double-edged sword that both informs and distracts, having the potential to both help and hinder learning. Together, the qualitative and quantitative results demonstrate that several contextual relationships exist, including an important relationship between the particular ways of meaning making identified and the specific social media technologies undergraduates use for their university learning. For those concerned with social media in higher education, these results show how factors such as age and digital native claims should not be seen as primary, deterministic elements of technology use. Rather than taking an approach founded upon technological determinism, the idea of a generational zeitgeist should be considered, where learning context and social media affordances become key.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Social Media in the Dental School Environment, Part A: Benefits, Challenges, and Recommendations for Use

Social media consist of powerful tools that impact not only communication but relationships among people, thus posing an inherent challenge to the traditional standards of who we are as dental educators and what we can expect of each other. This article examines how the world of social media has changed dental education. Its goal is to outline the complex issues that social media use presents for academic dental institutions and to examine these issues from personal, professional, and legal perspectives. After providing an update on social media, the article considers the advantages and risks associated with the use of social media at the interpersonal, professional, and institutional levels. Policies and legal issues of which academic dental institutions need to be aware from a compliance perspective are examined, along with considerations and resources needed to develop effective social media policies. The challenge facing dental educators is how to capitalize on the benefits that social media offer, while minimizing risks and complying with the various forms of legal constraint

Social Journalism Study 2013 - United Kingdom

The 3rd annual Social Journalism Study, conducted by Cision and Canterbury Christ Church University, is the latest instalment in our efforts to understand how journalists use social media for work and in their communication with PR professionals. Similar to previous years, the findings of this year’s study show that journalists are using a greater variety of social media tools and are increasingly reliant on social media for a variety of different tasks. Generally, views about the impacts of social media are positive, but journalists remain unsure whether these tools have made them more productive. Unique to our study is the identification of a typology which groups journalists into five categories according to particular patterns of social media practices and attitudes

Tracing the German Centennial Flood in the Stream of Tweets: First Lessons Learned

Social microblogging services such as Twitter result in massive streams of georeferenced messages and geolocated status updates. This real-time source of information is invaluable for many application areas, in particular for disaster detection and response scenarios. Consequently, a considerable number of works has dealt with issues of their acquisition, analysis and visualization. Most of these works not only assume an appropriate percentage of georeferenced messages that allows for detecting relevant events for a specific region and time frame, but also that these geolocations are reasonably correct in representing places and times of the underlying spatio-temporal situation. In this paper, we review these two key assumption based on the results of applying a visual analytics approach to a dataset of georeferenced Tweets from Germany over eight months witnessing several large-scale flooding situations throughout the country. Our results con rm the potential of Twitter as a distributed 'social sensor' but at the same time highlight some caveats in interpreting immediate results. To overcome these limits we explore incorporating evidence from other data sources including further social media and mobile phone network metrics to detect, confirm and refine events with respect to location and time. We summarize the lessons learned from our initial analysis by proposing recommendations and outline possible future work directions