Instant marketing? Instant Messenger

Purpose This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings Mobile instant messaging is a potential avenue for customer service and marketing departments to explore. Yet there are significant issues with the wholesale adoption of MIM apps. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Subversive affordances as a form of digital transnational activism: The case of Telegram’s native proxy

Internet, social media, and app shutdowns have become frequent, not only in authoritarian states but also in emerging and fragile democracies. As Russian authorities enforced a legal blockage to Instant Messenger Telegram during the past 2 years, many users kept using the app seamlessly thanks to what we call a subversive affordance: a built-in proxy functionality that allows users to seamlessly circumvent the blockage. We claim it is subversive because it allows users to overcome the blockage as the consequence of the app’s development, with a significant fraction of users who did not have to take action to bypass the blockage. By conducting an online survey and performing a meta-cluster analysis, we found a group we labeled the undeprived: people that, despite presenting traits frequently associated with digital divides—such as gender, age, and low levels of digital skills—were able to keep using the app.

Sensitivity to financial rewards and impression management links to smartphone use and dependence

Computational modeling and brain imaging studies suggest that sensitivity to rewards and behaviorist learning principles partly explain smartphone engagement patterns and potentially smartphone dependence. Responses to a questionnaire, and observational measures of smartphone use were recorded for 121 university students. Each participant was also tested with a laboratory task of reward sensitivity and a test of verbal operant conditioning. Twenty-three percent of the sample had probable smartphone addiction. Using multivariate regression, smartphone use, particularly the number of instant messenger services employed, was shown to be significantly and independently predicted by reward sensitivity (a positive relationship), and by instrumental conditioning (a negative relationship). However, the latter association was driven by a subset of participants who developed declarative knowledge of the response-reinforcer contingency. This suggests a process of impression management driven by experimental demand characteristics, producing goal-directed instrumental behavior not habit-based learning. No other measures of smartphone use, including the self-report scale, were significantly associated with the experimental tasks. We conclude that stronger engagement with smartphones, in particular instant messenger services, may be linked to people being more sensitive to rewarding stimuli, suggestive of a motivational or learning mechanism. We propose that this mechanism could underly problem smartphone use and dependence. It also potentially explains why some aspects of smartphone use, such as habitual actions, appear to be poorly measured by technology-use questionnaires. A serendipitous secondary finding confirmed that smartphone use reflected active self-presentation. Our ‘conditioning’ task-induced this behavior in the laboratory and could be used in social-cognition experimental studies.

Drug mule for love

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to gain in-depth understandings of the stages involved in the case of a romance scam victim who was unknowingly used as a drug mule. The work compares this case with established research in this field. It also seeks to learn more about the strategies used by these cybercriminals. Design/methodology/approach The research presents a case study of a victim of a romance scam who was arrested for drug trafficking. The research involves a grounded theory analysis of interviews with the victim, legal team and family members and analysis of her instant messenger chat logs and email communications. Findings The analysis identified a variation on previous stage models of romance scams and re-names this as the “romance scammers” strategy model. It also replicates previous work on scammers’ techniques and highlights some new strategies, including positively and negatively framing messages, unconditional positive regard, activating norms of romantic relationships, cognitive immersion, manipulating role, sleep deprivation and signing is believing. Practical implications These findings could be used to help guide future similar court cases. Moreover, they can be drawn upon to advance future research on romance scams, as well as scams in general. Originality/value This is the first in-depth case study of a romance scam victim involved in drug trafficking and is the first research on romance scams to examine in depth a case, taking into account textual exchanges. While not undermining previous research, this paper provides valuable insights that are lacking in previous qualitative work on cyber scam victims.

THE ROLE OF MOBILE INSTANT MESSENGER AS SUPPORTIVE PLATFORM FOR MEDICAL CAREER INTERVENTION

Background: Career intervention in medical students is an activity meant to increase awareness and early exposure on various medical careers. Utilization of technology as a support to career intervention model offers a novel approach that might optimize the exposure and quality of the intervention and can be developed as a safe and non-judgemental environment for the students to talk about career-related topics. Aims: This study aimed to determine the use of mobile instant messenger as a supportive tool for medical career intervention. Learning Media Review: LineTM is a mobile instant messenger platform that is used to communicate and send messages using the internet. This platform provides voice and video calls, text messages, polls, and other features such as: stickers, photos, videos, voice messages, and location. These features can be accessed free of charge by users. This article uses discussion and participatory observation methods for three weeks. Thirty six (n=36) first-year medical students that were joining a career introduction course were placed into on online group, a LineTM group, led by two facilitators to guide their daily discussion. The responses are voluntary and they were encouraged to express themselves freely without any topic restriction whatsoever throughout the sessions. Online transcripts were then coded according to recurring topics and themes that came up during their discussions. Eight themes were identified from the discussion and categorised into three: 3 major categories, 2 intermediate and 3 minor. Major themes identified were role model, non-academic career information, and clinical clerkship. This study show maximum engagement of 26 participants on first day with maximum discussion length in one topic of three hours during career-related topics. Conclusion: Mobile instant messaging is considered useful in supporting a medical career intervention, especially in providing career information and carrying a momentum for career-related discussion. It is further stated that the role of online facilitator as a peer mentor is major in providing quality discussion, a safe environment, and accurate source of information to the students.

Akuisisi Bukti Digital Viber Messenger Android Menggunakan Metode National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Viber is one of the most popular social media in the Instant Messenger application category that can be used to send text messages, make voice calls, send picture messages and video messages to other users. As many as 260 million people around the world have used this application. Increasing the number of viber users certainly brings positive and negative impacts, one of the negative impacts of this application is the use of digital forensic crime. This research simulates and removes digital crime evidence from the viber application on Android smartphones using the National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST) method, which is a method that has work guidelines on forensic policy and process standards to ensure each investigator follows the workflow the same so that their work is documented and the results can be accounted for. This study uses three forensic tools, MOBILedit Forensic Express, Belkasoft and Autopsy. The results in this study show that MOBILedit Forensic Express gets digital evidence with a percentage of 100% in getting accounts, contacts, pictures and videos. While proof of digital chat is only 50%. Belkasoft gets digital evidence with a percentage of 100% in getting accounts, contacts, pictures and videos. While proof of digital chat is only 50%. For Autopsy does not give the expected results in the extraction process, in other words the Autopsy application gives zero results. It can be concluded that MOBILedit Forensic Express and Belkasoft have a good performance compared to Autopsy and thus this research has been completed and succeeded in accordance with the expected goals.