The Dark Side of Using Online Social Networks

Research on online social networks (OSNs) has focused overwhelmingly on their benefits and potential, with their negative effects overlooked. This study builds on the limited existing work on the so-called ‘dark side’ of using OSNs. The authors conducted a systematic review of selected databases and identified 46 negative effects of using OSNs from the users’ perspective, which is a rich spectrum of users’ negative experiences. This article then proposed nomenclature and taxonomy for the dark side of using OSNs by grouping these negative effects into six themes: cost of social exchange, cyberbullying, low performance, annoying content, privacy concerns and security threats. This study then conducted structured interviews with experts to confirm the sense-making and validity of the proposed taxonomy. This study discusses the confirmed taxonomy and outlines directions for future research.

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Mujeres empresarias en el uso de la web 2.0: discursos de un preludio / Entrepreneur Women in the Use of Web 2.0: Speeches of a Prelude

Revista Internacional de Ciencias Sociales ◽

10.37467/gka-revsocial.v3.805 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Mª del Rosario Rodríguez Díaz ◽

Mª José González Río ◽

Mª Ángeles Rebollo Catalán

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Web 2.0 ◽

Online Social Networks ◽

Early Stage ◽

Strategic Communication ◽

Management Tool ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Redes Sociales ◽

Stage Of Development ◽

On Line

ABSTRACTThis paper presents the main results of an investigation whose purpose is to investigate the adoption of on-line social networks in SMEs run by women. The base assumption is that the use of networks as a strategic communication element is still at an early stage of development, far from being an established practice. Our interest in this study is to determine the willingness and motivations of entrepreneurs in using these networks, as well as utilities and difficulties they have faced. Our goal is to visualize the change of attitude and competences that entrepreneurs are imprinting on their businesses within the competitive environment they operate in. Ultimately, we are interested in studying the perception of women-entrepreneurs regarding the adoption of online social networks to the extent where they are, as an additional management tool. We find ourselves facing a new field of knowledge on which there are very few references and very little research has been carried. Hence, this study has a primarily qualitative and exploratory purpose. To obtain the needed information we held semi-structured interviews to fourteen Andalusian entrepreneurs, coming from different business fields. The main findings were that just less than a half of them used them, or implemented them in their companies, as communication tools. The others, depending on to the size of their business, adopted them as an extension of the personal use in which they had been started.RESUMENEste trabajo presenta los principales resultados de una investigación cuya finalidad es conocer la adopción de las redes sociales on-line en las pymes dirigidas por mujeres. Se parte de la base de que el uso de redes, como elemento estratégico de comunicación, se encuentra todavía en una fase incipiente de desarrollo, lejos aún de ser una práctica consolidada. Nuestro interés en este trabajo es conocer la predisposición y motivaciones de las empresarias hacia el uso estas redes, así como las utilidades y dificultades a las que han de enfrentarse. Nos interesa visibilizar el cambio actitudinal y competencial que las empresarias están imprimiendo en sus empresas dentro del marco competitivo en el que se encuentran. En definitiva, nos interesa estudiar la percepción que tienen las empresarias sobre el uso de las redes sociales online en la medida en que están insertas, como una herramienta más de gestión empresarial. Nos situamos ante un nuevo ámbito de conocimiento sobre el que apenas existen referencias bibliográficas ni se ha realizado apenas investigación; de ahí que la investigación tenga una finalidad fundamentalmente exploratoria y de carácter cualitativo. Para la obtención de la información se realizaron catorce entrevistas semi-estructuradas entre empresarias andaluzas de distintos sectores de actividad. Entre los principales resultados encontramos que algo menos de la mitad de ellas las utilizan, o están implantadas en sus empresas, como herramientas de comunicación. El resto, y relacionado con el tamaño de sus negocios, las utilizan como una prolongación del uso personal en el que se iniciaron.

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Privacy Concerns for Photo Sharing in Online Social Networks

IEEE Internet Computing ◽

10.1109/mic.2014.107 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 58-63 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

Kaitai Liang ◽

Joseph K. Liu ◽

Rongxing Lu ◽

Duncan S. Wong

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Online Social Networks ◽

Privacy Concerns ◽

Photo Sharing

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Evaluating the Presence of Greek Tourism-Related Public Sector Entities in Online Social Networks

International Journal of Public Administration in the Digital Age ◽

10.4018/ijpada.2019010102 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 15-40

Author(s):

Konstantinos Vrettos ◽

Dimitris Gouscos

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Quantitative Analysis ◽

Public Sector ◽

Online Social Networks ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Tourism Product ◽

Tourism Sector ◽

General Government ◽

Quantitative Results ◽

Do So

Social networks have become one of the most popular tools in promoting the tourism product. This applies to National Tourism Agencies, as well as tourism-related general government bodies (GGBs) and local authorities (LAs). This study examines such organizations alongside selected chief administration officials (CAOs) that are related with the tourism sector and attempts to evaluate their presence in three social networks: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In order to do so, this article builds upon and expands on existing social networks' metrics, incorporating them into metrics of online followership. The quantitative analysis results in a ranking of best performers, from which the authors select three good performers in order to follow with a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews. By merging the quantitative results with the feedback from the interviews the authors propose a basic normative social networks management toolkit for tourism-related public entities, found to be comprised of six thematic axes.

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Happiness Is Assortative in Online Social Networks

Artificial Life ◽

10.1162/artl_a_00034 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 17 (3) ◽

pp. 237-251 ◽

Cited By ~ 123

Author(s):

Johan Bollen ◽

Bruno Gonçalves ◽

Guangchen Ruan ◽

Huina Mao

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Online Social Networks ◽

Real Life ◽

Well Being ◽

Mood States ◽

Physical Contact ◽

Future Research ◽

Human Society ◽

Subjective Well Being ◽

Collective Behaviors

Online social networking communities may exhibit highly complex and adaptive collective behaviors. Since emotions play such an important role in human decision making, how online networks modulate human collective mood states has become a matter of considerable interest. In spite of the increasing societal importance of online social networks, it is unknown whether assortative mixing of psychological states takes place in situations where social ties are mediated solely by online networking services in the absence of physical contact. Here, we show that the general happiness, or subjective well-being (SWB), of Twitter users, as measured from a 6-month record of their individual tweets, is indeed assortative across the Twitter social network. Our results imply that online social networks may be equally subject to the social mechanisms that cause assortative mixing in real social networks and that such assortative mixing takes place at the level of SWB. Given the increasing prevalence of online social networks, their propensity to connect users with similar levels of SWB may be an important factor in how positive and negative sentiments are maintained and spread through human society. Future research may focus on how event-specific mood states can propagate and influence user behavior in “real life.”

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Systematic Evaluation of LibreSocial—A Peer-to-Peer Framework for Online Social Networks

Future Internet ◽

10.3390/fi12090140 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (9) ◽

pp. 140 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Newton Masinde ◽

Liat Khitman ◽

Iakov Dlikman ◽

Kalman Graffi

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Online Social Networks ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

System Stability ◽

Systematic Evaluation ◽

P2p Networks ◽

Privacy Concerns ◽

Benchmark Tests ◽

Random Behavior ◽

Overall Performance

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks have been under investigation for several years now, with many novel mechanisms proposed as is shown by available articles. Much of the research focused on showing how the proposed mechanism improves system performance. In addition, several applications were proposed to harness the benefits of the P2P networks. Of these applications, online social networks (OSNs) raised much interest particularly because of the scalability and privacy concerns with centralized OSNs, hence several proposals are in existence. However, accompanying studies on the overall performance of the P2P network under the weight of the OSN applications outside simulations are very few, if any. In this paper, the aim is to undertake a systematic evaluation of the performance of a P2P framework for online social networks called LibreSocial. Benchmark tests are designed, taking into account the random behavior of users, effects of churn on system stability and effect of replication factor. We manage to run benchmark tests for up to 2000 nodes and show the performance against costs of the system in general. From the results it is evident that LibreSocial’s performance is capable of meeting the needs of users.

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A Model of Perception of Privacy, Trust, and Self-Disclosure on Online Social Networks

Entropy ◽

10.3390/e21080772 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 21 (8) ◽

pp. 772 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Nemec Zlatolas ◽

Welzer ◽

Hölbl ◽

Heričko ◽

Kamišalić

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Online Social Networks ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Online Survey ◽

Equation Modeling ◽

Privacy Risk ◽

Self Disclosure ◽

Privacy Concerns ◽

Significant Relationships ◽

Privacy Issues

Online Social Networks are used widely, raising new issues in terms of privacy, trust, and self-disclosure. For a better understanding of these issues for Facebook users, a model was built that includes privacy value, privacy risk, trust, privacy control, privacy concerns, and self-disclosure. A total of 602 respondents participated in an online survey, and structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the model. The findings indicate significant relationships between the constructs in this study. The model from our study contributes new knowledge to privacy issues, trust and self-disclosure on Online Social Networks for other researchers or developers of online social networks.

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The Influence of (Online) Social Networks on Workers' Attitudes and Behaviours in Higher Education Institutions

Social Issues in the Workplace ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-3917-9.ch034 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 644-666

Author(s):

Vera Silva Carlos ◽

Ricardo Gouveia Rodrigues

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Social Networks ◽

Web 2.0 ◽

Online Social Networks ◽

Higher Education Institutions ◽

Positive Influence ◽

Faculty Members ◽

Future Research ◽

Work Related ◽

Considerable Impact

According to the literature, social relationships have a positive influence on work-related attitudes and behaviours. Taking into account that Online Social Networks (OSNs), brought about by Web 2.0, have become an international phenomena and have a considerable impact on the way people communicate and interact with each other, the chapter's purpose is to evaluate the effect that the use of OSNs has on the worker's attitudes and behaviours. In this way, the authors use a questionnaire to evaluate the attitudes of 157 faculty members in Higher Education Institutions (HEI). To assess the use of OSNs by faculty members, they use a binary variable. After analysing and discussing the results, the authors conclude that the use of OSNs influences the workers' performance traits. The relations they propose in what concerns the workers' attitudes are all empirically proven. At last, the authors describe the study limitations and suggest some perspectives for future research.

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A Secure and Privacy-Preserving Approach to Protect User Data across Cloud based Online Social Networks

Research Anthology on Artificial Intelligence Applications in Security ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-7705-9.ch027 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 560-585

Author(s):

Neelu khare ◽

Kumaran U.

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Online Social Networks ◽

Data Access ◽

Privacy Preserving ◽

Security And Privacy ◽

Sensitive Information ◽

Privacy Concerns ◽

Attribute Based Encryption ◽

User Data ◽

Trapdoor Function

The tremendous growth of social networking systems enables the active participation of a wide variety of users. This has led to an increased probability of security and privacy concerns. In order to solve the issue, the article defines a secure and privacy-preserving approach to protect user data across Cloud-based online social networks. The proposed approach models social networks as a directed graph, such that a user can share sensitive information with other users only if there exists a directed edge from one user to another. The connectivity between data users data is efficiently shared using an attribute-based encryption (ABE) with different data access levels. The proposed ABE technique makes use of a trapdoor function to re-encrypt the data without the use of proxy re-encryption techniques. Experimental evaluation states that the proposed approach provides comparatively better results than the existing techniques.

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