Analyzing Behavioral Implications of Face Mask Wearing to Slow COVID-19 in Organizational Workplaces

As the nation battles COVID-19, we analyze the policy and tactics required to follow the recommendations of scientists and health professionals to achieve physical and psychological well-being by wearing masks to slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2. An online survey from a business-focused social media network is employed to understand the issues for and against mask wearing. The survey findings showed that 60% of organizations have created some kind of health pact, pledge, or commitment and that most plans identified impact everyone who interacts with a business, not just employees. The findings do not shed much light on what drives people to opt out of mask wearing. The practical findings are that there is a need for achieving, understanding, and subsequent buy in of mask wearing that would be helped with a solid plan. The limitations of the research are primarily the small size of the convenience sample and the fact that the population may be restricted. Replication of this type of study with a formal, qualitative approach aimed at populations of interest is highly recommended.

Social media and new services: how a consulting firm leveraged LinkedIn

Purpose This paper aims to explore how social media can be used strategically for delivering new services in a small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) context. Design/methodology/approach Single case study: CONSULT+ (pseudonym), a consulting firm specialized in change management. Consultants use a social media network to develop their new services. Findings To take on the challenges of heightened competition, CONSULT+ has created thematic business units to encourage new service development. This research explored strategies, practices and benefits associated of using social media network by intrapreneurs at all levels of new service idea trajectory (idea generation, elaboration, championing and implementation). Research limitations/implications The research is based on a single case study. Further research should be conducted to establish the generalization of the results. Practical implications This paper highlights the key success factors in making such an approach successful: raising awareness of the benefits of using social media; analysing of complementarities of tools; accompanying the development of advanced practices; capturing the valuable potential for the organization and avoiding negative effects of individual practices. Originality/value The research provides a unique approach that can be practically implemented within knowledge-intensive SMEs to leverage social media network to deliver new services (best practices and insights for managerial support schemes).

Social Media Network Attacks and their Preventive Mechanisms: A Review

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.

Political Learning through a Social Media Network

This study tries to fill the knowledge theory gap on the impact of social media use in political discourse. This research examines social media's performance in political learning where it does not exist as part of classroom learning. Social media is differentiated between activities that do not involve political interaction directly and discussion with other users. This study develops a cross-sectional survey on undergraduate college students' representatives of the five biggest campuses in Bandung, Indonesia. A total of 977 students filled questionnaires. The results show political discussion through social media networks providing students' political learning. The more students discuss related politics through social media, the higher their level of political awareness becomes. Social media activities do not impact political learning, where these activities do not involve discussion with other users. This study shows that students obtain political learning through political discussion through their networks, not just through social media activities. Political learning through social media requires discussion related to politics. Besides, sex, age, and expenditure also affect students' political knowledge acquisition. The results have implications for conducting studies on specific platforms to confirm social media activities' impact according to each platform's characteristics.

Global monitoring of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic through online surveys sampled from the Facebook user base

Simultaneously tracking the global impact of COVID-19 is challenging because of regional variation in resources and reporting. Leveraging self-reported survey outcomes via an existing international social media network has the potential to provide standardized data streams to support monitoring and decision-making worldwide, in real time, and with limited local resources. The University of Maryland Global COVID-19 Trends and Impact Survey (UMD-CTIS), in partnership with Facebook, has invited daily cross-sectional samples from the social media platform's active users to participate in the survey since its launch on April 23, 2020. We analyzed UMD-CTIS survey data through December 20, 2020, from 31,142,582 responses representing 114 countries/territories weighted for nonresponse and adjusted to basic demographics. We show consistent respondent demographics over time for many countries/territories. Machine Learning models trained on national and pooled global data verified known symptom indicators. COVID-like illness (CLI) signals were correlated with government benchmark data. Importantly, the best benchmarked UMD-CTIS signal uses a single survey item whereby respondents report on CLI in their local community. In regions with strained health infrastructure but active social media users, we show it is possible to define COVID-19 impact trajectories using a remote platform independent of local government resources. This syndromic surveillance public health tool is the largest global health survey to date and, with brief participant engagement, can provide meaningful, timely insights into the global COVID-19 pandemic at a local scale.

Fact-checking on Twitter: An analysis of the hashtag #StopBulos

The fact-checking is an important tool to improve the quality of the information that circulates in virtual networks. Although there are different fact-checking verification agencies, we also found some more informal strategies such as the use of the hashtag #Stopbulos. Thus, this research aims to characterize the #StopBulos hashtag on Twitter as a way to verify information and control the spread of fake news. The results showed that there was diversity among users and the themes of the tweets that included this hashtag, while the main function was to deny fake news. However, it was found that those who achieved greater dissemination were the users with the largest number of followers and institutional character. The implications of using the #StopBulos hashtag as a tool to identify false information on social networks are discussed. Keywords: fake news, post-truth, post-news, social media, network societies