scholarly journals Analysis of Witnesses in the Steem Blockchain

Author(s):  
Barbara Guidi ◽  
Andrea Michienzi ◽  
Laura Ricci

AbstractOnline Social Networking platforms (OSNs) have become part of people’s everyday life and their usage covers the deep-rooted need for communication among humans. During recent years, as people are questioning more and more OSN service providers, a new generation of proposals, based on blockchain became very popular thanks to the ethics adopted by these platforms. Steemit is the most important blockchain-based social networking site, which integrates, as main novelty an economic layer to the social media service. Steemit is implemented on top of Steem which, as in other blockchains, awards miners of the blocks with cryptocurrency. Steem miners, called witnesses, are not chosen based on the solution of a mathematical problem, as in Proof of Work based systems, but must be voted by other users. In this work, we decide to study the witnesses on Steem and their contribution to the social platform Steemit, and their social impact. We performed a set of analyses to shred light concerning their behaviour and to understand how they are socially perceived by other users. Analyses show an important social impact but, at the same time, some of them have a negative social impact. Their discussion is polarized towards content concerning Steem, Steemit, witnesses, and other platforms hosted on Steem.

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaustav Mukherjee ◽  
Neelotpaul Banerjee

Purpose The study aims to demonstrate the impact of social media users’ positive attitude towards the social networking sites (SNS) on the generation of a positive attitude towards social networking advertisements (SNA). A favourable attitude towards the SNA thus generated can positively influence brand attitude and purchase intention. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was conducted to collect relevant data using a structured questionnaire. Structural equation modelling was conducted using the statistical software AMOS 18. Findings Empirical analysis revealed the importance of brand advertisements on the social networks in inciting a positive attitude as well as a purchase intention for the brand in the SNS users’ minds. Research limitations/implications The study has been conducted in the Indian context using Facebook as a model social networking site. Practical implications Social media being one of the most popular and user-friendly platforms for regular communications, marketers are suggested to allocate a sizeable share of the advertising budget for social media advertisements and customer engagement so as to help build a positive attitude towards the advertised brand in the SNS users’ minds. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the impact of users’ positive evaluation of SNS as an effective communication medium, on the generation of a positive attitude towards the SNA, has been dealt for the first time here.


Author(s):  
Christoph Pimmer ◽  
Jennifer Chipps ◽  
Petra Brysiewicz ◽  
Fiona Walters ◽  
Sebastian Linxen ◽  
...  

<p class="1">This exploratory study investigates how a typically disadvantaged user group of older, female learners from rural, low-tech settings used and perceived a Facebook group as a research supervision and distance learning tool over time. The within-stage mixed-model research was carried out in a module of a part-time, advanced midwifery education course in rural South Africa. To address the research questions, three quantitative and qualitative surveys were repeated, pre, post, and three months post evaluation. The findings indicate that using the social media space lowered learners' threshold to accessing educational resources. The increased ease of communication was afforded in particular by using mobile phones to access the space. The analysis also suggests that the social networking site became a more integral part of students' learning environments. The learners' use of the site to discuss further course and work-related issues increased during the intervention and also remained significantly higher in the three-month, post evaluation survey, indicating the routinisation and habitualisation of this learning space. The practical implications and constraints of using social networking spaces to enhance disadvantaged groups of learners’ access to educational resources are discussed.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Metwaly Ali Mohamed Edakar ◽  
Ahmed Maher Khafaga Shehata

Purpose The rapid spread and severity of the coronavirus (COVID-19) virus have prompted a spate of scholarly research that deals with the pandemic. The purpose of this study is to measure and assess the coverage of COVID-19 research on social media and the engagement of readers with COVID-19 research on social media outlets. Design/methodology/approach An altmetric analysis was carried out in three phases. The first focused on retrieving all papers related to COVID-19. Phase two of the research aimed to measure the presence of the retrieved papers on social media using altmetric application programming interface (API). The third phase aimed to measure Mendeley readership categories using Mendeley API to extract data of readership from Mendeley for each paper. Findings The study suggests that while social media platforms do not give accurate measures of the impact as given by citations, they can be used to portray the social impact of the scholarly outputs and indicate the effectiveness of COVID-19 research. The results confirm a positive correlation between the number of citations to articles in databases such as Scopus and the number of views on social media sites such as Mendeley and Twitter. The results of the current study indicated that social media could serve as an indicator of the number of citations of scientific articles. Research limitations/implications This study’s limitation is that the studied articles’ altmetrics performance was examined using only one of the altmetrics data service providers (altmetrics database). Hence, future research should explore altmetrics on the topic using more than one platform. Another limitation of the current research is that it did not explore the academic social media role in spreading fake information as the scope was limited to scholarly outputs on social media. The practical contribution of the current research is that it informs scholars about the impact of social media platforms on the spread and visibility of COVID-19 research. Also, it can help researchers better understand the importance of published COVID-19 research using social media. Originality/value This paper provides insight into the impact of COVID-19 research on social media. The paper helps to provide an understanding of how people engage with health research using altmetrics scores, which can be used as indicators of research performance.


Author(s):  
Michael V. Reiss ◽  
Noemi Festic ◽  
Michael Latzer ◽  
Tanja Rüedy

The fast-growing academic and public attention to algorithmic-selection applications such as search engines and social media is indicative of their alleged great social relevance and impact on daily life in digital societies. To substantiate these claims, this paper investigates the hitherto little explored subjective relevance that Internet users assign to algorithmic-selection applications in everyday life. A representative online survey of Internet users comparatively reveals the relevance that users ascribe to algorithmic-selection applications and to their online and offline alternatives in five selected life domains: political and social orientation, entertainment, commercial transactions, socializing and health. The results show that people assign a relatively low relevance to algorithmic-selection applications compared to offline alternatives across the five life domains. In particular social media are found to be of relatively low assigned relevance for all life domains investigated. The findings vary greatly by age and education. Altogether, such outcomes complement and qualify assessments of the social impact of algorithms that are primarily and often solely based on usage data and theoretical considerations.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Anton Cordes

Against the backdrop of the Federal Court of Justice's seminal ruling on the inheritability of a Facebook user account, this study examines whether and to what extent generalizable parameters can be developed for handling the digital estate and in which constellations the applicable law requires case-specific differentiation. For the analysis of a user’s digital assets the study will examine in particular the data protection law of the GDPR as well as the contractual leeway of the social media service providers under German T&C law.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Johnathan Yerby ◽  
Alex Koohang ◽  
Joanna Paliszkiewicz

The purpose of this study was to investigate the link between users’ risk beliefs and social media privacy concerns (concerns users express regarding social media sites’ practices as to how they collect and use personal information). A Likert-type instrument with seven constructs, six of which described the social media privacy concerns and the seventh construct defined users’ risk beliefs, was used to collect data from students who were studying at a university in the southeastern United States. All students (N = 138) used Facebook as their major social networking site. Collected data were analyzed via multiple regression analysis. The results indicated that subjects’ risk beliefs are influenced by three social media privacy concerns (i.e., collection, error, and awareness). The Findings and their implications are discussed. Recommendations for future research are made.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darja Judina ◽  
Konstantin Platonov

Social media have become one of the most important news delivery channels due to their interactivity and large audiences. The content published by news organizations on social networking sites is of particular value to sociologists, because it allows measurement of users’ attitude to certain events. However, we understand that the media choose which events become news in accordance with certain criteria, such as news values. In this study, we decided to examine how news values determine the public’s response as expressed by likes, reposts, and comments. To analyze the characteristics of different media and their audiences, we selected four popular newsgroups on the social networking site Vkontakte: TASS and Russia Today, representing the state media, alongside RBC and Meduza, representing the private media. The posts of the selected newsgroups were coded and analyzed by means of Harcup and O’Neill taxonomy of values (2016). The study showed that news organizations tend to have preferences for some news values rather than others. Regression analysis revealed positive relationships between 1) the sharing of likes and good and entertaining content, 2) the sharing of comments and the presence of celebrities or conflicts in news, 3) the sharing of reposts and comments and significant events. An unexpected discovery was a negative dependency between the number of comments and the presence of exclusive content.


10.28945/2167 ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 047-066
Author(s):  
Nicole A. Buzzetto-More ◽  
Robert Johnson ◽  
Muna Elobaid

Empowered by and tethered to ubiquitous technologies, the current generation of youth yearns for opportunities to engage in self-expression and information sharing online with personal disclosure no longer governed by concepts of propriety and privacy. This raises issues about the unsafe online activities of teens and young adults. The following paper presents the findings of a study examining the social networking activities of undergraduate students and also highlights a program to increase awareness of the dangers and safe practices when using and communicating, via social media. According to the survey results, young adults practice risky social networking site (SNS) behaviors with most having experienced at least one negative consequence. Further, females were more likely than males to engage in oversharing as well as to have experienced negative consequences. Finally, results of a post-treatment survey found that a targeted program that includes flyers, posters, YouTube videos, handouts, and in-class information sessions conducted at a Mid-Atlantic Historically Black College or University (HBCU) increased student awareness of the dangers of social media as well as positively influenced students to practice more prudent online behaviors.


10.28945/2150 ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole A. Buzzetto-More ◽  
Robert Johnson ◽  
Muna Elobaid

Empowered by, and tethered to, ubiquitous technologies, the current generation of youth yearns for opportunities to engage in self-expression and information sharing online with personal disclosure no longer governed by concepts of propriety and privacy. This raises issues about the unsafe activities of teens and young adults. The following paper presents the findings of a study examining the social networking activities of undergraduate students and also highlights a program to increase awareness of the dangers of, and safe practices using, social media. According to the survey results, young adults practice risky social networking site (SNS) behaviors with most having experienced at least one negative consequence. Further, females were more likely than males to engage in oversharing as well as to have experienced negative consequences. Finally, results of a post-treatment survey found that a targeted program that includes flyers, posters, YouTube videos, handouts, and in-class information sessions conducted at a Mid-Atlantic HBCU increased student awareness of the dangers of social media as well as positively influenced students to practice more prudent online behaviors. A revised version of this paper was published in Interdisciplinary Journal of e-Skills and Life Long Learning Volume 11, 2015 as "Communicating and Sharing in the Semantic Web: An Examination of Social Media Risks, Consequences, and Attitudinal Awareness"


Disabilities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-131
Author(s):  
Natasha Layton ◽  
Natasha Brusco ◽  
Tammy Gardner ◽  
Libby Callaway

Background: For people living with or affected by Huntington’s Disease (HD) to experience a good quality of life, tailored support is required to meet physical, cognitive-behavioral, psychological, and social support needs. Substantial service and knowledge gaps regarding HD exist across support providers and service systems. Measuring unmet needs and what quality of life looks like is a fundamental step required to determine the social impact of service investment and provision. The objectives of this study were to validate and map a draft set of HD Social Impact Domains (HD-SID) against existing national and international outcome frameworks; and evaluate and finalize the HD-SID set using a co-design approach with people with lived experience of, and expertise in, HD. Methods: This research used a qualitative co-design process, with 39 participants across four stakeholder groups (people who were HD gene-positive, gene-negative family members, academics, peak organizations, and service providers) to: (i) map and verify the social life areas impacted by HD; (ii) undertake a rigorous three-phased, qualitative process to critically evaluate the draft HD-SID; and (iii) seek feedback on and endorsement of the HD-SID through this co-design process, with a final set of HD-SID identified. Results: Endorsed HD-SID comprised risks and safety (including housing stability, and economic sustainability) and social inclusion (including health and symptom management, physical wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, and building resilient relationships). Conclusions: Effective measurement of the impacts and outcomes for people with HD is informed by both extant measures and an understanding of the specific population needs. This qualitative co-design research demonstrates that HD-SID resonate with the HD community.


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