Exploitation Of Social Media Research Articles

Analysis of The Influence of Communication and Promotion in Digital Social Media on Citizens' Participation in The Election

This research aims to provide conclusive results regarding interaction and discussion, use, and exploitation of social media in the context of general elections in the digital public space. This research involves analyzing all messages published by presidential candidates via social media during the general election campaign. Every day during the campaign, a presidential candidate published a tweet, thereby collecting data. The research results revealed that the general public's ability to participate in substantive political conversations related to the presidential election remains incomplete. The achievement of equality among participants in digital public spaces remains incomplete. Candidates focus more on their political messages and interactions with the media and their own political platforms rather than interacting equally with other users. The role of participants in digital public spaces is very relevant. Although the Internet provides a wealth of information, users tend to be disseminators rather than conducting in-depth analysis. This can hinder the formation of independent opinions and meaningful participation in political discussions. In this context, commercialization and excessive information on the internet can be detrimental to the process of creating a healthy public space. However, in reality, the internet has not been able to effectively overcome complex political challenges. In this context, it is important to develop a more critical understanding of the role of the internet in shaping the digital public sphere. This requires awareness of the challenges and complexities involved, as well as efforts to promote more active and educated participation in the digital public sphere.

Symbiotic Relationship between Deviant Religious Teachings and Conspiracy Theories: Characteristics, Adaptability, and Impact on the Muslim Community

This paper examines the symbiotic relationship between deviant religious teachings and conspiracy theories, investigating their shared characteristics, adaptability, and impact on the Muslim community. The study objectives encompass analyzing examples of this relationship, exploring the factors driving the utilization of conspiracy theories by deviant teachings, and evaluating the consequences for the Muslim community. Employing a qualitative approach, the research integrates a comprehensive literature review, case study analysis, and examination of online sources. The analysis involves collecting and scrutinizing instances of deviant teachings and their utilization of social media platforms, along with the accompanying conspiracy theories. The roles played by conspiracy theories in fostering group cohesion, legitimizing teachings, mobilizing support, and countering criticism are assessed. The findings reveal the extensive exploitation of social media and the internet by deviant teachings to propagate their ideologies. Conspiracy theories serve as potent tools to augment the appeal and credibility of these teachings, contributing to the formation of group identities, the establishment of legitimacy, and the attraction of followers. Furthermore, the study uncovers indications of potential involvement of proponents of deviant teachings as conspirators, given the proliferation of teachings with unclear sources and the reliance on conspiracy theories. In conclusion, this study emphasizes the necessity of comprehending and addressing the symbiotic relationship between deviant teachings and conspiracy theories. By promoting informed religious education and leveraging social media effectively, it is feasible to mitigate the adverse impact of these ideologies and safeguard the Muslim community against misconceptions and divisive influences.

Consciousness of social media and exploitation for learning among B.Ed student teachers in dindigul district

This present study explores the Consciousness of Social Media and Exploitation for Learning among B.Ed Student-Teachers. Social networks are becoming rather popular throughout the world. Their multi-dimensional uses and specifications increase every day. However, research shows that their scientific and educational functions are still limited. We believe that social networks have the potential to create new contexts and opportunities that increase students’ ability and knowledge. This study consists of 200 B.Ed Student-Teachers used simple random sampling technique. An analysis of the results was carried out using the SPSS software package. And the finding of this study shows that Consciousness of Social Media and Exploitation of Social Media for Learning are low for B.Ed Student-Teachers.

Threats to Military Institutions Arising from Operating in the Social Media Environment

The purpose of this paper is to present the scale of the effect that using the Internet can have on national security, and to raise awareness about the use of social media. The lack of security on the Internet or any regulations of law applicable to it must make us aware of the types of threats that originate from using the mobile apps, social media, and instant messengers that play a major role in our lives. Information security, construed as protection of information against inadvertent or wilful disclosure, modification, or enabling its processing or destruction, can be viewed from a technological and cognitive standpoint. The phenomenon of social media is driven by the human need for belonging, respect, and recognition. We seek acceptance from others, and not necessarily from our closest circles. This, in turn triggers a stimulus to share everything we do in the public space. The latest electronic devices make it possible to precisely locate their users. Online posts that we publish without understanding what could be garnered from them can be useful to a potential adversary. With the problem characterised like this, it can be anticipated that exploitation of social media can be a source of threats to national security. The hazards are becoming increasingly pertinent to the security of the military institutions that use the attributes of social media. This paper is an overview aimed at structuring and presenting the collected knowledge and raising awareness of social media in the context of the national security of military institutions. This paper uses theoretical research methods that include generalisation, analysis, synthesis, and inference.

E-Marketing in Islamic Banks: A Theoretical Study in the Exploitation of Social Media in Islamic Banking Services

There was a need to study some efforts and marketing strategies to build a wide awareness of e-marketing in Islamic banks. E-marketing can be adopted as a marketing approach in promoting Islamic banking products and services. Based on this, this research aims to identify the electronic banking services provided by Islamic banks, to identify the extent of the spread of these services, and to know the obstacles to adopting electronic marketing in Islamic banks. To achieve the objectives of the current study, the research methodology will depend on the following: Theoretical aspect: In this study, the descriptive analytical method was used to study the obstacles to adopting e-marketing in Islamic banks, where it was relied on books, periodicals, literature, pamphlets, references, previous studies, and other published researches related to the topic studying. The results revealed that in order to increase literacy and inclusion and expand the market share of Islamic banking products and services, digital marketing plays a role in building public trust, supporting traditional marketing, developing digital campaigns, and mapping target markets. The research recommends that banks should continue to improve their electronic banking services and ensure that these services are free and easy to use to suit all customers' requirements, and that the banking service provider monitors developments in the world of technology, and that the full picture of electronic banking services is improved by banks.

Situational Awareness for EU Decision-making: The Next Decade

In the face of increasing international risks and challenges, EU policies will need to rely more than ever on adequate and timely situational awareness. In view of Article 4(2) Treaty on European Union (TEU), voluntary contributions of Member States’ intelligence and security services channelled via the EU Intelligence Analysis and Situation Centre (EU INTCEN) and the Intelligence Directorate of the European Military Staff (EUMS.INT) will remain essential for the viability of EU decision-making. Furthermore, inputs from the EU satellite programmes, open source and social media exploitation, EU delegation reporting and Commission expertise will have to be added to that process in a more efficient, structured and timely way. Situational awareness has to be supported and protected by a resilient, secure and performant Information Technology (IT) – and command, control and communication (C3)-infrastructure connecting EU institutions, bodies and Member States, and keeping information safe. These are key components in increasingly embedding strategic foresight in EU policy-making and strengthening Europe’s autonomy. Situational awareness, intelligence support, EU INTCEN, Single Intelligence Analysis Capacity (SIAC), EU decision making process, CFSP, CSDP, Resilience, Hybrid Threats, Security of EU Institutions

Information Warfare and Democratic Decay

This paper is the first chapter of a book entitled Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Chinese and Russian Information Warfare (forthcoming, Stanford University Press). The book analyzes the threat presented by Chinese and Russian cyber troops, who exploit U.S. social media platforms to conduct information warfare. The book also presents a detailed proposal for transnational regulation of social media to protect democracies from information warfare. The first chapter analyzes the relationship between information warfare and democratic decay: the recent decline in the number of democratic states and the corresponding increase in the number of authoritarian states. The chapter defines “information warfare” as the exploitation of social media to conduct foreign influence operations (FIOs) or, alternatively, as “organized social media manipulation” (OSM) that is directed towards a foreign audience or foreign policy objective. Thus, information warfare lies at the intersection between OSM and FIOs. I argue that the combination of OSM, FIOs and information warfare—viewed in the aggregate—is a major factor contributing to the phenomenon of democratic decay. This chapter also presents a brief summary of the proposal for transnational regulation, which is developed in greater detail in later chapters.

Cracking the Political Code: The Case of E-participation in Colombia

Theory says that, in normal circumstances, politicians do not have many incentives to make the policy process more democratic, and that these political dynamics may be embedded into the enactment of technology. This work will try to determine if this holds true in the case of Urna de Cristal, a Colombian e-participation scheme. The nation-wide projects implemented by this programme in 2017 are analysed using three sets of political criteria—inclusion, participation, and deliberation—drawn from an evaluation framework of centralized cross-platform approaches to social media exploitation by government agencies (Ferro et al. 2013). The evidence suggests that the enactment of Urna de Cristal’s projects reflected the Colombian government’s intention of preventing the policy process from becoming more participatory and deliberative. Some data suggests the government tried to render this process more inclusive. Further research on e-participation should consider the political complexity of technology enactment in the public sector.

‘Every time I dress myself, it go motherfuckin’ viral’: Post-verbal flows and memetic hype in Young Thug's mumble rap

AbstractHip-hop studies have historically centred on issues of the ‘street’ or virtuosic lyricism and flow, foregrounded as evidence of the ‘seriousness’ of the genre. While these have undoubtedly been valuable theoretical approaches, the prominence of social networking in the 2010s (with its vast implications for communication and identity politics) has sculpted a generation of rappers whose vocal style and self-representation disintegrate prior assumptions about hip-hop identity. These artists, who have flourished in tandem with the rise of streaming services, have been disparagingly dubbed ‘mumble rap’ by traditionalists owing to the apparent indecipherability of their vocals and a lack of emphasis on observational or poetic lyricism. In this article I argue that this myopic label undervalues the groundbreakingly post-verbal nature of the music being created by these rappers, and highlights the innovations of mumble rap, exploring the centrality of social media, memes and streaming to its existence while critically examining its protagonists’ unconventionally stylised vocals. After analysing the impact of streaming, information overload and audience participation (through social media hype and memes) on contemporary hip-hop, I survey the growth of melodic Auto-Tuned vocals and repetitive lyricism in the work of pioneering mumble rappers such as Future, before turning to an extended examination of Atlanta's Young Thug, whose controversially malleable vocal style, which prioritises experimentation with vocal textures while confounding the rules of hip-hop flow, is mirrored by his impulsive exploitation of social media and androgynous fashion sense, establishing him as the most revolutionary archetype of so-called mumble rap.

Countering Extremists on Social Media: Challenges for Strategic Communication and Content Moderation

Extremist exploitation of social media platforms is an important regulatory question for civil society, government, and the private sector. Extremists exploit social media for a range of reasons—from spreading hateful narratives and propaganda to financing, recruitment, and sharing operational information. Policy responses to this question fit under two headings, strategic communication and content moderation. At the center of both of these policy responses is a calculation about how best to limit audience exposure to extremist narratives and maintain the marginality of extremist views, while being conscious of rights to free expression and the appropriateness of restrictions on speech. This special issue on “Countering Extremists on Social Media: Challenges for Strategic Communication and Content Moderation” focuses on one form of strategic communication, countering violent extremism. In this editorial we discuss the background and effectiveness of this approach, and introduce five articles which develop multiple strands of research into responses and solutions to extremist exploitation of social media. We conclude by suggesting an agenda for future research on how multistakeholder initiatives to challenge extremist exploitation of social media are conceived, designed, and implemented, and the challenges these initiatives need to surmount.

Extremism and Intelligence


 
 
 Contemporary extremist threats encompass a widening spectrum, whereby long-standing threats are supplemented by the stubborn persistence of historical threats, and by the emergence of new threats and Violent Transnational Social Movements (VTSMs). For security and intelligence agencies, the management challenges posed by the evolving picture are complex and multi-faceted. Probably the most difficult challenge is that of prioritisation and the allocation of resources across the spectrum of investigation. Other challenges include those of recruiting and retaining staff with the right cutting-edge skills, especially in such fields of social media exploitation; and a fundamental definitional question of how to define some of the newly-emerging threats, avoiding questions of surveillance crossing-over into inappropriate suppression of legitimate dissent in a liberal democracy.
 
 

Detection of Social Media Exploitation via SMS and Camera

Internet users all over the world are highly exposed to social media exploitation, where they are vulnerable to be targeted by this cyber-attack. Furthermore, excessive use of social media leads to Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD). Fortunately, social media exploitation and IAD can be monitored and controlled closely based on user’s mobile phone surveillance features which are camera, SMS, audio, geolocation (GPS) and call log. Hence to overcome these challenges, this paper presents five (5) Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and four (4) permissions for SMS and camera that are mostly and widely used with the social media applications. These 9 APIs and permissions matched with 2.7% of the APIs and permissions training dataset that are related with SMS and camera. This experiment was conducted by using hybrid analysis, which inclusive of static analysis and dynamic analysis, with 1926 training dataset from Brunswick. These 9 APIs and permissions, if being misused by the attacker, could lead to privacy concerns of a mobile device. The finding from this paper can be used as a guidance and reference for the formation of new mobile malware detection technique and modeling in future.

Report on the Second Workshop on Exploitation of Social Media for Emergency Relief and Preparedness (SMERP 2018) at the Web Conference (WWW) 2018

The Second Workshop on Exploitation of Social Media for Emergency Relief and Preparedness (SMERP) was held in conjunction with The Web Conference (WWW) 2018 at Lyon, France. A primary aim of the workshop was to promote multi-modal and multi-view information retrieval from the social media content in disaster situations. The workshop programme included keynote talks, a peer-reviewed paper track, and a panel discussion on the relevant research problems in the scope of the workshop.

Educational Data Classification Framework for Community Pedagogical Content Management using Data Mining

Recent years witness the significant surge in awareness and exploitation of social media especially community Question and Answer (Q&A) websites by academicians and professionals. These sites are, large repositories of vast data, pawing ways to new avenues for research through applications of data mining and data analysis by investigation of trending topics and the topics of most attention of users. Educational Data Mining (EDM) techniques can be used to unveil potential of Community Q&A websites. Conventional Educational Data Mining approaches are concerned with generation of data through systematic ways and mined it for knowledge discovery to improve educational processes. This paper gives a novel idea to explore already generated data through millions of users having variety of expertise in their particular domains across a common platform like StackOverFlow (SO), a community Q&A website where users post questions and receive answers about particular problems. This study presents an EDM framework to classify community data into Software Engineering subjects. The framework classifies the SO posts according to the academic courses along with their best solutions to accommodate learners. Moreover, it gives teachers, instructors, educators and other EDM stakeholders an insight to pay more attention and focus on commonly occurring subject related problems and to design and manage of their courses delivery and teaching accordingly. The data mining framework performs preprocessing of data using NLP techniques and apply machine learning algorithms to classify data. Amongst all, SVM gives better performs with 72.06% accuracy. Evaluation measures like precision, recall and F-1 score also used to evaluate the best performing classifier.

Beyond sound level monitoring: Exploitation of social media to gather citizens subjective response to noise

Subjective response to noise is probably the most important goal in environmental acoustics. Traditional surveys have the drawback of high cost deriving from its development and execution, the limited number of participants, and the duration of the surveying campaign. The main drawbacks of online surveys are the low participation, or the self-produced bias that concerns about the topic can raise. In both cases, the process of designing questionnaires, implementing the survey, and analysing the results can be long, expensive and ineffective to monitor changes in the short-term.With the creation of Online Social Networks (OSN), people have changed the manner they communicate and use technology. Nowadays, people can provide information regarding their likes, opinion and discomfort about any topic, including noise, in just a few minutes with their smartphone. These Internet opinions can be analysed automatically using machine learning and Natural Language Processing techniques to get insights that can help in the early detection of noise problems, or in the prior assessment of action plans. This information can be significant helpful in addressing noise management by local authorities and stakeholders.The purpose of this paper is to present a novel methodology, based on machine learning, allowing for the gathering and processing of OSN text data, enabling the generation of a system able to exploit the data to detect noise complaints and to classify them by source. This methodology has been piloted in a case study using Twitter, and the main results are presented.

Exploitation of Social Media for Emergency Relief and Preparedness: Recent Research and Trends

Online Social Media, such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp, are important sources of real-time information related to emergency events, including both natural calamities, man-made disasters, epidemics, and so on. There has been lot of recent work on designing information systems that would be useful for aiding post-disaster relief operations, as well as for pre-disaster preparedness. A special issue on “Exploitation of Social Media for Emergency Relief and Preparedness” was conducted for the journal Information Systems Frontiers. The objective of this special issue was to present a platform for dissemination of the empirical results of various technologies for extracting vital and actionable information from social media content in disaster situations. The papers included in this issue are expected to be the stepping stones for future explorations and technical innovations towards technologies meant for utilizing various online and offline information sources for enhancing pre-disaster preparedness and post-disaster relief operations.

How an Environment of Stress and Social Risk Shapes Student Engagement With Social Media as Potential Digital Learning Platforms: Qualitative Study.

BackgroundSocial media has been increasingly used as a learning tool in medical education. Specifically, when joining university, students often go through a phase of adjustment, and they need to cope with various challenges such as leaving their families and friends and trying to fit into a new environment. Research has shown that social media helps students to connect with old friends and to establish new relationships. However, managing friendships on social media might intertwine with the new learning environment that shapes students’ online behaviors. Especially, when students perceive high levels of social risks when using social media, they may struggle to take advantage of the benefits that social media can provide for learning.ObjectiveThis study aimed to develop a model that explores the drivers and inhibitors of student engagement with social media during their university adjustment phase.MethodsWe used a qualitative method by interviewing 78 undergraduate students studying medical courses at UK research-focused universities. In addition, we interviewed 6 digital technology experts to provide additional insights into students’ learning behaviors on social media.ResultsStudents’ changing relationships and new academic environment in the university adjustment phase led to various factors that affected their social media engagement. The main drivers of social media engagement were maintaining existing relationships, building new relationships, and seeking academic support. Simultaneously, critical factors that inhibited the use of social media for learning emerged, namely, collapsed online identity, uncertain group norms, the desire to present an ideal self, and academic competition. These inhibitors led to student stress when managing their social media accounts, discouraged them from actively engaging on social media, and prevented the full exploitation of social media as an effective learning tool.ConclusionsThis study identified important drivers and inhibitors for students to engage with social media platforms as learning tools. Although social media supported students to manage their relationships and support their learning, the interaction of critical factors, such as collapsed online identity, uncertain group norms, the desire to present an ideal self, and academic competition, caused psychological stress and impeded student engagement. Future research should explore how these inhibitors can be removed to reduce students’ stress and to increase the use of social media for learning. More specifically, such insights will allow students to take full advantage of being connected, thus facilitating a richer learning experience during their university life.

A visual approach for age and gender identification on Twitter

The goal of Author Profiling (AP) is to identify demographic aspects (e.g., age, gender) from a given set of authors by analyzing their written texts. Recently, the AP task has gained interest in many problems related to computer forensics, psychology, marketing, but specially in those related with social media exploitation. As known, social media data is shared through a wide range of modalities (e.g., text, images and audio), representing valuable information to be exploited for extracting valuable insights from users. Nevertheless, most of the current work in AP using social media data has been devoted to analyze textual information only, and there are very few works that have started exploring the gender identification using visual information. Contrastingly, this paper focuses in exploiting the visual modality to perform both age and gender identification in social media, specifically in Twitter. Our goal is to evaluate the pertinence of using visual information in solving the AP task. Accordingly, we have extended the Twitter corpus from PAN 2014, incorporating posted images from all the users, making a distinction between tweeted and retweeted images. Performed experiments provide interesting evidence on the usefulness of visual information in comparison with traditional textual representations for the AP task.

ECIR 2017 Workshop on Exploitation of Social Media for Emergency Relief and Preparedness (SMERP 2017)

The first international workshop on Exploitation of Social Media for Emergency Relief and Preparedness (SMERP) was held in conjunction with the 2017 European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR) in Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. The aim of the workshop was to explore various technologies for extracting useful information from social media content in disaster situations. The workshop included a peer-reviewed research paper track, a data challenge, two keynote talks, and discussion sessions on the relevant open research challenges. This report presents an overview of the workshop, including the motivations behind organizing the workshop, and summaries of the research papers and keynote talks at the workshop. We also reflect on the future directions as inferred from discussion sessions during the workshop

Social Media Exploitation by Covert Networks: A Case Study of ISIS

Social media has quickly become a dominant mode of professional and personal communication. Unfortunately, groups who intend to perform illegal and/or harmful activities (such as gangs, criminal groups, and terrorist groups) also use it. These covert networks use social media to foster membership, communicate among followers and non-followers, and obtain ideological and financial support. This exploitation of social media has serious political, cultural, and societal repercussions that go beyond stolen identities, hacked systems, or loss of productivity. There are literal life-and-death consequences of the actions of the groups behind these covert networks. However, through tracking and analyzing social media content, government agencies (in particular those in the intelligence community) can mitigate this threat by uncovering these covert networks, their communication, and their plans. This paper introduces common social media analysis techniques and the current approaches of analyzing covert networks. A case study of the Syrian conflict, with particular attention on ISIS, highlights this exploitation and the process of using social media analysis for intelligence gathering. The results of the case study show that covert networks are resilient and continually adapt their social media use and presence to stay ahead of the intelligence community.