Analysis of Discourses on WhatsApp Coup Reported in the Media

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-60
Author(s):  
Frank Makoza

Use of social media applications has become popular in the context of developing countries. Social media are transforming the way individuals and organisations communicate and interact in their social settings. This paper presents a critical analysis of discourses on use of WhatsApp among opposition party politicians. Using the case of Malawi, the study analysed media reports and government documents using critical social theory. The findings showed power relations issues related to domination, communication distortions, and conflict of interests in the social and political discourses. Further, the study highlighted the effects of absence and outdated laws and legal frameworks in dealing with emerging use of new technologies in political activities (e.g., use of WhatsApp) in the context of a developing country. The study makes recommendations for policymakers and law enforcement agencies in addressing challenges related to the use and regulation of new technologies.

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-45
Author(s):  
Margarita Jaitner

The increased adoption of social media has presented security and law enforcement authorities with significant new challenges. For example, the Swedish Security Service (SÄPO) asserts that a large proportion of radicalization takes place in open fora online. Still, approaches to contain social media-driven challenges to security, particularly in democratic societies, remain little explored. Nonetheless, this type of knowledge may become relevant in European countries in the near future: Amongst other factors, the challenging economic situation has resulted in increased public discontent leading to emergence or manifestation of groups that seek to challenge the existing policies by almost any means. Use of social media multiplies the number of vectors that need law enforcement attention. First, a high level of social media adaption allows groups to reach and attract a wider audience. Unlike previously, many groups today consist of a large but very loosely connected network. This lack of cohesion can present a challenge for authorities, to identify emerging key actors and assess threat levels. Second, a high level of mobile web penetration has allowed groups to ad-hoc organize, amend plans and redirect physical activities. Third, the tool social media is as not exclusive to potential perpetrators of unlawful action, but is as well available to law enforcement authorities. Yet, efficient utilization of social media requires a deep understanding of its nature and a well-crafted, comprehensive approach. Acknowledging the broad functionality of social media, as well as its current status in the society, this article describes a model process for security authorities and law enforcement work with social media in general and security services work in particular. The process is cyclic and largely modular. It provides a set of goals and tasks for each stage of a potential event, rather than fixed activities. This allows authorities to adapt the process to individual legal frameworks and organization setups. The approach behind the process is holistic where social media is regarded as both source and destination of information. Ultimately, the process aims at efficiently and effectively mitigating the risk of virtual and physical violence.


10.2196/14546 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. e14546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gow-Jen Shieh ◽  
Shi-Liang Wu ◽  
Che-Fu Tsai ◽  
Chi-Sen Chang ◽  
Tsung-Hung Chang ◽  
...  

Background Optimizing the use of social media to promote hospital branding is important in the present digital era. In Taiwan, only 51.1% of hospitals have official Facebook fan pages. The numbers of likes for these hospitals are also relatively low. Objective Our objective was to establish a special branding team for social media operation, led by top administrators of our hospital. Here we present our strategic imperative for promoting hospital branding as well as an analysis of its effectiveness. Methods Led by top administrators, the branding team was formed by 11 divisions to create branding strategies. From 2016 to 2018, the team implemented action plans. All information unique to the hospital was posted on Facebook, as well as on the hospital’s official website. To determine the plans’ efficiencies, we obtained reference data from Google Analytics, and we compared Facebook Insights reports for 2016 with those for 2017 and 2018. Results One of the branding team’s main missions was to establish branding strategies and to integrate segmental branding messages. In each quarter we regularly monitored a total of 52 action plan indicators, including those for process and outcome, and discussed the results at team meetings. We selected 4 main performance outcome indicators to reflect the effectiveness of the branding efforts. Compared with 2016, the numbers of likes posted on the Facebook fan page increased by 61.2% in 2017 and 116.2% in 2018. Similarly, visits to the hospital website increased by 4.8% in 2017 and 33.1% in 2018. Most Facebook fan page and website viewers were in 2 age groups: 25 to 34 years, and 35 to 44 years. Women constituted 60.42% (14,160/23,436) of Facebook fans and 59.39% (778,992/1,311,605) of website viewers. According to the Facebook Insights reports, the number of likes and post sharing both increased in 2017 and 2018, relative to 2016. Comment messages also increased from 2016 to 2018 (P=.02 for the trend). The most common theme of posts varied over time, from media reports in 2016, to innovative services in both 2017 and 2018. Likes for innovative services posts increased from 2016 through 2018 (P=.045 for the trend). By the end of 2018, we recorded 23,436 cumulative likes for posts, the highest number among medical centers in Taiwan. Conclusions We achieved the largest number of Facebook fans among all medical centers in Taiwan. We would like to share our experience with other hospitals that might be interested in engaging in social media for future communications and interactions with their patients.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 394
Author(s):  
Alaa Makki ◽  
Ahmed Omar Bali

Social media applications have become a vital tool for human daily communication and are widely used in the education process worldwide. Regardless of the use of social media by some instructors as a personal initiative, in Iraq, social media's use for educational purposes has been neglected. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the world to implement online teaching using varying technology applications including social media as an essential tool in the learning process. This shifted the Iraqi government’s understanding of social media's role in education to the extent that they formally recommended that the educational departments, schools, universities use social media as a formal platform to keep the education going. However, there were concerns about using social media for several factors such as internet services, information and communication technology skills of instructors and students, integrity, and quality insurance of education. This study investigated the teachers' and students’ perceptions regarding these concerns by adopting a survey method through an online questionnaire using 'google forms' (N= 2010) with responses from teachers and students of universities and high schools and parents of students of basic schools. This study revealed that less than half of the respondents were in favor of using social media in the learning process. The findings suggested that the educational level, age, and geographical hierarchies and jobs of respondents are also correlated with using social media and e-learning.   Received: 12 September 2020 / Accepted: 11 February 2021 / Published: 10 May 2021


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gow-Jen Shieh ◽  
Shi-Liang Wu ◽  
Che-Fu Tsai ◽  
Chi-Sen Chang ◽  
Tsung-Hung Chang ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Optimizing the use of social media to promote hospital branding is important in the present digital era. In Taiwan, only 51.1% of hospitals have official Facebook fan pages. The numbers of likes for these hospitals are also relatively low. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to establish a special branding team for social media operation, led by top administrators of our hospital. Here we present our strategic imperative for promoting hospital branding as well as an analysis of its effectiveness. METHODS Led by top administrators, the branding team was formed by 11 divisions to create branding strategies. From 2016 to 2018, the team implemented action plans. All information unique to the hospital was posted on Facebook, as well as on the hospital’s official website. To determine the plans’ efficiencies, we obtained reference data from Google Analytics, and we compared Facebook Insights reports for 2016 with those for 2017 and 2018. RESULTS One of the branding team’s main missions was to establish branding strategies and to integrate segmental branding messages. In each quarter we regularly monitored a total of 52 action plan indicators, including those for process and outcome, and discussed the results at team meetings. We selected 4 main performance outcome indicators to reflect the effectiveness of the branding efforts. Compared with 2016, the numbers of likes posted on the Facebook fan page increased by 61.2% in 2017 and 116.2% in 2018. Similarly, visits to the hospital website increased by 4.8% in 2017 and 33.1% in 2018. Most Facebook fan page and website viewers were in 2 age groups: 25 to 34 years, and 35 to 44 years. Women constituted 60.42% (14,160/23,436) of Facebook fans and 59.39% (778,992/1,311,605) of website viewers. According to the Facebook Insights reports, the number of likes and post sharing both increased in 2017 and 2018, relative to 2016. Comment messages also increased from 2016 to 2018 (<italic>P</italic>=.02 for the trend). The most common theme of posts varied over time, from media reports in 2016, to innovative services in both 2017 and 2018. Likes for innovative services posts increased from 2016 through 2018 (<italic>P</italic>=.045 for the trend). By the end of 2018, we recorded 23,436 cumulative likes for posts, the highest number among medical centers in Taiwan. CONCLUSIONS We achieved the largest number of Facebook fans among all medical centers in Taiwan. We would like to share our experience with other hospitals that might be interested in engaging in social media for future communications and interactions with their patients.


Author(s):  
Donald L. Amoroso ◽  
Tsuneki Mukahi ◽  
Mikako Ogawa

This chapter looks at the adoption of general social media applications on usefulness for business, comparing the factors that influence adoption at work between Japan and the United States. In Japan, ease of use and usefulness for collective knowledge in general social media are predictors of usefulness for business social media, and in the United States, only usefulness for collective knowledge is a strong predictor of usefulness for business. The authors did not find behavioral intention to use social media in the workplace to be an important factor in predicting the usefulness of social media for business. The value of this research is its ability to understand the use of social media in the workplace to include how the experience of social media impacts on the expectation of usefulness for business and how the impact of ease of use differs from Japanese to the United States because of cultural, technological, and market reasons.


Author(s):  
Ann M. Simpson

Social media use is prevalent throughout the world and is now commonplace in higher education. The devices, support technologies, and social media applications used in higher education are in a constant state of change. Using social media in education creates new and sometimes challenging issues for institutions, instructors, and students. This chapter attempts to address some of the considerations and potential issues that impact our use of social media in the higher education classroom. It examines social media as an educational tool in higher education, possible pedagogies for social media use, potential educational contexts, and privacy concerns raised by social media use in educational environments. This chapter also provides a possible definition for social media and introduces some themes that will be explored in further detail in the following chapters.


2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 15-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Haggerty ◽  
Mark C. Casson ◽  
Sheryllynne Haggerty ◽  
Mark J. Taylor

The increasing use of social media, applications or platforms that allow users to interact online, ensures that this environment will provide a useful source of evidence for the forensics examiner. Current tools for the examination of digital evidence find this data problematic as they are not designed for the collection and analysis of online data. Therefore, this paper presents a framework for the forensic analysis of user interaction with social media. In particular, it presents an inter-disciplinary approach for the quantitative analysis of user engagement to identify relational and temporal dimensions of evidence relevant to an investigation. This framework enables the analysis of large data sets from which a (much smaller) group of individuals of interest can be identified. In this way, it may be used to support the identification of individuals who might be ‘instigators’ of a criminal event orchestrated via social media, or a means of potentially identifying those who might be involved in the ‘peaks’ of activity. In order to demonstrate the applicability of the framework, this paper applies it to a case study of actors posting to a social media Web site.


2015 ◽  
Vol 75 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amirul Afif Jasmi ◽  
Mohamad Hafis Izran Ishak ◽  
Nurul Hawani Idris

Over recent years, there has been a growth of interest in the use of social media including Facebook and Twitter by the authorities to share and updates current information to the general public. The technology has been used for a variety of purposes including traffic control and transportation planning. There is a concern that the use of new technologies, including social media will lead to data abundance that requires effective operational resources to interpret the big data. This paper proposes a tweet data extractor to extract the traffic tweet by the authority and visualise the reports and mash up on top of online map, namely Twitter map. Visualisation of traffic tweet on a map could assist a user to effectively interpret the text based Twitter report by a location based map viewer. Hence, it could ease the process of planning itinerary by the road users. 


2020 ◽  
pp. 194016122094096
Author(s):  
Kiyoung Chang ◽  
Jeeyoung Park

This study examines how citizens’ social media use may have influenced their participation in highly polarizing protests during the 2016–2017 corruption scandal in South Korea. As social media users mobilize politically by acquiring varied political information from other users, social media use created more incentives for citizens to participate in both pro- and anti-impeachment protests during the scandal. Given that social media is an important arena for political activism, participation in rival protests also influences many motivated protesters to strengthen their side’s voices online. Thus, protests may increase citizens’ political use of social media. Our empirical analysis suggests that social network service use does not influence citizens’ political activities in a unidirectional manner. We have found that social media use and participation in rival protests reciprocally influence each other.


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