scholarly journals Social Media in an Emergency: Use of Social Media in Rescuing Abducted School Girls in Nigeria

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 67-75
Author(s):  
Muhammad Abdullahi Maigari ◽  
Uthman Abdullahi Abdul-Qadir

This paper examines the abduction of the schoolgirls in Chibok Local Government Area of Borno State, Nigeria in 2014. The paper examined how the abduction of the schoolgirls generated responses and support for the rescue of the abducted girls from people and organization from different parts of the globe. The Islamists terrorist organization operating in Borno State has attracted the attention of the world since 2009 when they started attacking government establishments and security installations northeast which later escalated to major cities in Northern Nigeria. Methodologically, the paper utilized secondary sources of data to analyze the phenomenon studied. The paper revealed that the development and innovations in information and communication technology which dismantled traditional and colonial boundaries enabled people to express support, solidarity and assist victims of conflict who resides millions of Kilometers away. This shows that Internet-based communications technology has reduced the distance of time and space that characterised traditional mass media. The campaign for the release of the schoolgirls on the social media platforms particularly Twitter and Facebook has tremendously contributed to the release of some of them. Furthermore, the girls freed from abduction have received proper attention: education and reintegration programmes which enable them to start post-abduction life. In this regard, social media has become a tool for supporting the government in moments of security challenges which the Bring Back Our Girls campaign attracted foreign and domestic assistance to Nigeria in the search of the abducted girls and the fight against the Islamist insurgents.

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Firdaus Samijadi

Social Media has made its’ way of playing an important role in e-Government implementation strategies. Many governments include social media as a tool to approach and engage its’ citizens, to increase transparency, trust and online participation. Although social media is not yet fully understood by governments on how to effectively utilize social media as a tool to be beneficial to the government and the general public. This research focuses on the Social Media activity of the Government Departments of Suriname. With around 1.9 billion active users, Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms in the world. This study furthers analyzes how active social media accounts are being used by the departments and how online users respond to departmental online activities. In order to achieve the goal of this paper, the 14 social media accounts of Suriname government departments will be taken as a case study. Several accounts indicate that government to citizen engagement show much potential for citizens’ active online participation. While the use of social media in e-Government initiatives is a feasible approach to successful implementation, there are still some improvement governments should take into consideration to increase online participation and fulfilling the needs of their citizens.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 211
Author(s):  
Philip Nyblom ◽  
Gaute Wangen ◽  
Vasileios Gkioulos

Social media are getting more and more ingrained into everybody’s lives. With people’s more substantial presence on social media, threat actors exploit the platforms and the information that people share there to deploy and execute various types of attacks. This paper focuses on the Norwegian population, exploring how people perceive risks arising from the use of social media, focusing on the analysis of specific indicators such as age, sexes and differences among the users of distinct social media platforms. For data collection, a questionnaire was structured and deployed towards the users of multiple social media platforms (total n = 329). The analysis compares risk perceptions of using the social media platforms Facebook (n = 288), Twitter (n = 134), Reddit (n = 189) and Snapchat (n = 267). Furthermore, the paper analyses the differences between the sexes and between the digital natives and non-natives. Our sample also includes sufferers of ID theft (n = 50). We analyse how account compromise occurs and how suffering ID theft changes behaviour and perception. The results show significant discrepancies in the risk perception among the social media platform users across the examined indicators, but also explicit variations on how this affects the associated usage patterns. Based on the results, we propose a generic risk ranking of social media platforms, activities, sharing and a threat model for SoMe users. The results show the lack of a unified perception of risk on social media, indicating the need for targeted security awareness enhancement mechanisms focusing on this topic.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 349
Author(s):  
Nunik Nurhayati ◽  
Rohmad Suryadi

The era of social media today bring significant change to democracy in Indonesia. Social media can to bring the expansion of the public space in cyberspace, citizens can directly deliver aspirations regarding the state policy. However, on the other side, social media vulnerable to abuse because of many the anonymous account, which acts as the buzzer political influence public perceptions and to get political support but is not elegant way. This shows, social media provides a challenge to democracy, including Indonesia as a third largest country that has access to the social media in the world's. Based on it’s the problems, this research aims to identify the impact of the social media on democratic life, and how the challenges of democracy in Indonesia ahead in the social media today.This Research using qualitative methods. Data collection through the study of literature. Then analyzed with a critical discourse analysis. The results of the study showed that the impact of social media in Indonesia has brought problems such as hoax, which is currently a serious concern of the government. Attempts were made through the campaign against hoax and make regulation, Information and Electronic Transactions Law (ITE Law), which aims to regulate the use of social media and to prevent hoaxes. The life of democracy in Indonesia receive significant challenges,but of the repressive laws against users of social media may actually weaken the democratic life in Indonesia.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237428952093401
Author(s):  
Yonah C. Ziemba ◽  
Dana Razzano ◽  
Timothy C. Allen ◽  
Adam L. Booth ◽  
Scott R. Anderson ◽  
...  

The use of social media at academic conferences is expanding, and platforms such as Twitter are used to share meeting content with the world. Pathology conferences are no exception, and recently, pathology organizations have promoted social media as a way to enhance meeting exposure. A social media committee was formed ad hoc to implement strategies to enhance social media involvement and coverage at the 2018 and 2019 annual meetings of the Association of Pathology Chairs. This organized approach resulted in an 11-fold increase in social media engagement compared to the year prior to committee formation (2017). In this article, the social media committee reviews the strategies that were employed and the resultant outcome data. In addition, we categorize tweets by topic to identify the topics of greatest interest to meeting participants, and we discuss the differences between Twitter and other social media platforms. Lastly, we review the existing literature on this topic from 23 medical specialties and health care fields.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 211
Author(s):  
Klaudia Smoląg ◽  
Anna Lemańska-Majdzik

<p>The development of information and communication technology significantly determines how enterprises conduct their activities. The use of ICT solutions is visible in each area of the functioning of enterprises, in particular in activities aimed at promotion of products and services. The aim of all promotional activities is to exercise influence on the current and future customers of a company. They involve providing customers with information to increase their knowledge about the products and services and the company itself. In today's digital economic life, in order to reach potential customers and retain the existing ones, companies have to observe and quickly adapt ICT solutions. Key ICT solutions include social media, which have had a significant impact on both the social and economic life. The growing number of social media users contributed to changes in the form and way of communicating and building mutual relations. Moreover, the final say on many issues belongs more and more often to people for whom Internet communication is an integral part of life, which undoubtedly is a clear signal that preferences of today's and future consumers are undergoing a diametrical change. This change in consumers' preferences, expectations and needs forces enterprises to use effective ways of communication and new forms of providing information to a specific target group. Social media users constitute an increasing group that often actively joins promotional activities undertaken by a company. In addition, the social media environment enables presentation of information that is characterised by high quality, elaborate content and interesting form (text, photos, animation or films). These are only some of the factors in favour of the use of social media in the promotional activity of enterprises. However, the modern reality as well as extended functionality and variety of  social media are on the one hand conducive to building and maintaining relations with customers, while on the other hand, they requires appropriate preparation of a strategy of action in a new, virtual economic world.</p><p class="AbstractText">The aim of the paper is to analyse, based on literature studies, the assumptions of enterprises' strategies of action in the social media environment, with particular reference to fanpage. Based on the results of own studies of a group of 172 Polish users of social media conducted at the end of 2015, key actions taken by users on fanpages were indicated, and significant elements influencing the proper structure of fanpage from the user's perspective were presented.</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
xiaoling Hao ◽  
Daqing Zheng ◽  
Qingfeng Zeng ◽  
Weiguo Fan

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how to use social media in e-government to strengthen interactivity between government and the general public. Design/methodology/approach – Categorizing the determinants to interactivity covering depth and breadth into two aspects that are the structural features and the content features, this study employs general linear model and ANOVA method to analyse 14,910 posts belonged to the top list of the 96 most popular government accounts of Sina, one of the largest social media platforms in China. Findings – The main findings of the research are that both variables of the ratio of multimedia elements, and the ratio of external links have positive effects on the breadth of interactivity, while the ratio of multimedia features, and the ratio of originality have significant effects on the depth of interactivity. Originality/value – The contributions are as follows. First, the authors analyse the properties and the topics of government posts to draw a rich picture of how local governments use the micro-blog as a communications channel to interact with the public. Second, the authors conceptualize the government online interactivity in terms of the breadth and depth. Third, the authors identify factors that will enhance the interactivity from two aspects: structural features and content features. Lastly, the authors offer suggestions to local governments on how to strengthen the e-government interactivity in social media.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-115
Author(s):  
Christine W Njuguna ◽  
Joyce Gikandi ◽  
Lucy Kathuri-Ogola ◽  
Joan Kabaria-Muriithi

There is a rise in unprecedented political infractions, disturbances and electoral violence in Africa with the youth playing a significant role. Thus, the study broadly investigated social media use and electoral violence among the youth in Kenya using two objectives that were to assess the use of social media platforms among the youth and to investigate the relationship between social media use and electoral violence among the youth. Guided by the Dependency Theory and the Social Responsibility Theory, the study was carried out in Mathare Constituency, Nairobi County, Kenya. Data collection involved questionnaires, key informant interviews and focus group discussions. Analysis of quantitative data was by descriptive statistics and regression while qualitative data was analyzed through transcription. The study findings showed that the use of social media platforms in communication has been growing with WhatsApp becoming the most ‘preferred’ platform in Kenya. The study outcome exposed the fact that social media had an important and positive effect on electoral violence among the Kenyan youth in Mathare (R = .812). On the other hand, social media (Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram) had a strong explanatory strength on electoral violence among the Kenyan youth in Mathare (R2 = .659). This means that social media accounts for 65.9 percent of electoral violence among the Kenyan youth in Mathare Constituency, Nairobi County. The study, therefore, concluded that there is a relationship between social media and electoral violence among the Kenyan youth in Mathare. The study finally recommends that the government should embrace and enforce self-regulation mechanisms by Internet service providers to deter incitement. In addition, there should be increased efforts to educate and inform Internet users on the importance of assessing the credibility of information. Promotion of productive engagement as an effective instrument of dealing with online hatred is key.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Etuh ◽  
Francis S. Bakpo ◽  
Eneh A.H

We live in a virtual world where actual lifestyles are replicated. The growing reliance on the use of social media networks worldwide has resulted in great concern for information security. One of the factors popularizing the social media platforms is how they connect people worldwide to interact, share content, and engage in mutual interactions of common interest that cut across geographical boundaries. Behind all these incredible gains are digital crime equivalence that threatens the physical socialization. Criminal minded elements and hackers are exploiting social media platforms (SMP) for many nefarious activities to harm others. As detection tools are developed to control these crimes so also hackers’ tactics and techniques are constantly evolving. Hackers are constantly developing new attacking tools and hacking strategies to gain malicious access to systems and attack social media network thereby making it difficult for security administrators and organizations to develop and implement the proper policies and procedures necessary to prevent the hackers’ attacks. The increase in cyber-attacks on the social media platforms calls for urgent and more intelligent security measures to enhance the effectiveness of social media platforms. This paper explores the mode and tactics of hackers’ mode of attacks on social media and ways of preventing their activities against users to ensure secure social cyberspace and enhance virtual socialization. Social media platforms are briefly categorized, the various types of attacks are also highlighted with current state-of-the-art preventive mechanisms to overcome the attacks as proposed in research works, finally, social media intrusion detection mechanism is suggested as a second line of defense to combat cybercrime on social media networks.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. e20-e29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalyan Gudaru ◽  
Leonardo Tortolero Blanco ◽  
Daniele Castellani ◽  
Hegel Trujillo Santamaria ◽  
Marcela Pelayo-Nieto ◽  
...  

Background and Objectives There is an increasing use of social media amongst the urological community. However, it is difficult to identify urological data on various social media platforms in an efficient manner. We proposed a hashtag, #UroSoMe, to be used when posting urology-related content in the social media platforms. The objectives of this article are to describe how #UroSoMe was developed, and to report the data of the first month of #UroSoMe.   Material and Methods The hashtag, #UroSoMe, was introduced to the urological community. The #UroSoMe working group was formed, and the members actively invited and encouraged people to use the hashtag #UroSoMe when posting urology-related contents. After the #UroSoMe (@so_uro) platform on twitter had grown to more than 300 users, the first live event of online case discussion, i.e. #LiveCaseDiscussions, was conducted. A prospective observational study of the hashtag #UroSoMe Twitter activity during the first month of its usage from 14 December 2018 to 13 January 2019 was evaluated. Outcome measures included number of users, number of tweets, user location, top tweeters, top hashtags used and interactions. Analysis was performed using NodeXL (Social Media Research Foundation; California, USA; https://www.smrfoundation.org/nodexl/), Symplur (https:// www.symplur.com) and Twitonomy (https://www.twitonomy.com).   Results The first month of #UroSoMe activity documented 1373 tweets/retweets by 1008 tweeters with 17698 mentions and 1003 replies. The #LiveCaseDiscussions was able to achieve a potential reach of 2,033,352 Twitter users. The top tweets mainly included cases presented by #UroSoMe working group members during #LiveCaseDiscussions. The twitonomy map showed participation from 214 geographical locations. The major groups of participants using the hashtag #UroSoMe were ‘Researcher/Academic’ and ‘Doctor’. The twitter account of #UroSoMe (@so_uro) has now grown to more than 1000 followers.   Conclusions Social media is an excellent platform for interaction amongst the urological community. The results demonstrated that #UroSoMe was able to achieve wide spread engagement from all over the world.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Khalid Mahmmod Ahmad Mansour ◽  
Fayez Jomah Saleh Al-Najjar

This study aimed to shed the light on the role of Social Media usage in the innovative behavior through the recent information technology (IT) in the organizations specialized in the information and communication technology (ICT) field. The study population consisted of the ICT organizations operating in Jordan as affiliated with the Information and Communication Technology Association (INTAJ) amounting to 161 organization. The analysis unit consisted of the managers in the top and middle level. The study relied on the simple random sample; and it reached a number of conclusions the most important of which is that the perceptions by respondents of the independent variable Social Media Usage were medium; and the same applies to all its dimensions. The dependent variable Innovative Behavior was also medium, as well as all its dimensions. As for the mediator variable IT, the respondents&#39; perceptions were high, along with all its dimensions. The study indicated that there is a statistically significant impact for the Social Media usage with its component on the innovative behavior. Also, it was found that a statistically significant impact for the Social Media usage with its component on the innovative behavior through the IT in the organizations operating in the ICT field in Jordan. These conclusions indicated that there is an opportunity for the ICT organizations to promote its innovative behavior through the Social Media usage. Based on the reached conclusions, the study concluded a set of recommendations the most important of which is that the awareness should be increased with respect to the capacities that are available due to the use of the Social Media as well as the advantages that can be utilized by the ICT organizations in Jordan through this use; the organization should well utilize the Social Media usage especially the Groups and Sharing by taking the necessary decision that lead to the activation of the Social Media role in the various phases of the innovative behavior; and the need for the organizations to direct the use of Social Media through the dissemination of a culture of innovation based on the use of Social Media.


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