Spread Of Messages Research Articles

Impact of fake news, message and spam spread through social media on people decision making ability

In the early days of the Internet, people argued that the Internet would enable greater transparency of information, which would increase the quality of democracies. The availability of information from various news sources would enable people to find their own information from non-traditional news outlets, and this decreased reliance on a narrow set of traditional news sources would improve democracy. Some might argue that there has been a decrease in the quality of democracy due to pervasive fake news on social media. A recent editorial in Science calls on the scientific community to help reporters and the general public to better identify and avoid fake news Social media is different from other media providing news (e.g., TV news, news websites, and mobile phone news apps) because users do not choose the source of articles that they see on social media. Instead, proprietary algorithms provide targeted information with little transparency. With other news media, users pick the source first, and do so with a familiarity of the nature of the source. With social media such as Facebook, articles from a wide variety of sources appear on users’ newsfeeds. News articles are intermixed with sponsored articles (i.e., paid advertisements) and posts from family and friends. All of these may be intentionally or unintentionally true or false, but some are explicitly designed to influence People. About 23% of social media users report that they have accidently or intentionally shared fake news. Over 60% say that fake news leaves them confused about current events.

Evaluating the Influence of Social Media Use in COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy of Residents of Owerri Metropolis

The study aimed to find out the level of vaccine hesitancy to COVID-19 vaccines in Nigeria and determine whether social media is facilitating the spread of anti-vaccination messages about COVID-19 vaccines and the extent of vaccine hesitancy which is attributable to use of social media. The researchers used the cultivation theory to explain how frequent use of social media for information about the coronavirus pandemic has influenced users’ attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccine. A survey was conducted which produced quantitative data from 300 respondents using the multi-stage sampling technique, with the questionnaire as the instrument to elicit data on how social media influenced respondents’ decision on getting immunized. Findings showed that hesitancy is high in Nigeria. It revealed that social media is facilitating the spread of misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine. The researchers found out that hesitancy is attributable to social media because social media was the leading information source (45%) that enabled respondents to make the decision not to take the COVID-19 vaccine. This study recommends that governments, the NCDC, the NPHCDA, the health industry and the media must use social media, alongside traditional media to propagate vaccine campaigns to negate the misinformation spreading online.

Modeling the transmission dynamics of racism propagation with community resilience

Racism spreading can have a vital influence on people’s lives, declining adherence, pretending political views, and recruiters’ socio-economical crisis. Besides, Web 2.0 technologies have democratized the creation and propagation of racist information, which facilitated the rapid spreading of racist messages. In this research work, the impact of community resilience on the spread dynamics of racism was assessed. To investigate the effect of resilience-building, new SERDC mathematical model was formulated and analyzed. The racism spread is under control where R_0<1 , whereas persist in the community whenever R_0>1. Sensitivity analysis of the parameters value of the model are conducted. The rising of transmission and racial extremeness rate provides the prevalence of racism spread. Effective community resilience decline the damages, mitigate, and eradicate racism propagation. Theoretical analysis of the model are backed up by numerical results. Despite the evidence of numerical simulations, reducing the transmission and racial extremeness rate by improving social bonds and solidarity through community resilience could control the spread of racism.

Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, Incitement: Anwar al-Awlaki’s Western Jihad

Reviewed by: Incitement: Anwar al-Awlaki’s Western Jihad by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens Stephen Nemeth Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, Incitement: Anwar al-Awlaki’s Western Jihad (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020) Few have done more to popularize and operationalize the ideas of Salafi-Jihadism than American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Despite a lack of religious qualifications and education, his charisma and deftness as a storyteller provided the justification that allowed scores of Muslims in the West to commit acts of violence. Islamic terrorism, under his watch, transformed from the near-exclusive province of organizations to that of “open-source jihad”: an action that can be done individually and by any true believer. Since his death in 2011—an event that gained him the dubious distinction of being the first US citizen killed in a US drone strike—the story of his life, combined with his writings and lectures, have continued to serve as an inspiration. In Incitement: Anwar al-Awlaki’s Western Jihad, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens seeks to understand the cleric’s enduring impact. He does so through the perspective of social movement theory (SMT) with Awlaki serving in the role of a “movement entrepreneur.” This is a useful theoretical grounding; understanding Awlaki in this way allows us to contextualize and recognize his impact much more so than simply viewing him as an influential agitator. In order to understand Awlaki’s efforts, Meleagrou-Hitchens uses SMT tools of framing theory and collective identity construction. These, in essence, help to define a [End Page 133] community, determine the problems of the world, develop solutions, and then provide the motivation to act. Incitement proceeds in three parts. In the first, we are presented with the story of Awlaki’s ideological evolution and a discursive analysis of his output. Two points become readily evident. The first is that, as the author notes, Awlaki’s beliefs remained relatively consistent throughout his adult life. From one of his early positions—a part-time imam at a Denver mosque—Awlaki was an advocate of jihad. While after 9/11 Awlaki served as a voice of moderation to a frightened American public, he still seemingly agreed with “al-Qaeda’s analysis and diagnosis of the problems with the current world order as it related to Muslims. He did not at this point publicly share in its prognosis” (27). This would occur in due time. Second, it was evident at an early stage that Awlaki would become a skilled movement entrepreneur; he possessed a prodigious talent to captivate and persuade. His teachings were eclectic, drawing from a wide variety of references— allusions to Islam’s past, theology, and current events. This drew large and enthusiastic crowds. He created a collective identity for today’s Muslims that resonated: they, like their predecessors from Islam’s early days, were under threat. If Muslims wanted to fight back and regain their former glories, he argued, jihad was the answer. This message spread far and wide, bolstered by his (questionable) credentials as a legitimate and learned religious scholar. Central to Awlaki’s teachings were two fundamental Muslim concepts. The first was the concept of hijrah. This refers to the period of time when Muhammad left Mecca for Medina to avoid persecution. From this new location, Muhammad undertook a variety of jihad campaigns against the pagan tribes. For Awlaki, one of Islam’s greatest successes occurred in this period: the number of followers ballooned. Today’s Muslims, he argued, were living in similar times and, like their predecessors, had to engage in action against the non-believers. True Muslims could not simply feel that they were part of the ummah. Rather, this had to be backed up by action—either by making hijrah to go to jihadist war zones or by conducting operations at home. The second concept is that of al-wala wal-bara. This relates to the delineation of the world between Muslims and non-Muslims. For Awlaki, life in the West and its attendant cultural and political practices served to dilute Muslim identity. In order to combat this, true Muslims should put up a barrier between themselves and their non-Muslim counterparts. This served to create intra-Muslim distinctions...

Utilization of Instagram: Efforts to Introduce Publishing Study Program and Publishing Works to the Community

This article discusses the selection of Instagram as a promotional medium in introducing the Creative Media State Polytechnic Publishing study program and publishing works. Information such as photos or videos of work products, pictures of learning activities, and other activities added to the Instagram account. This information can be seen by followers and can get a response or input directly. The study used qualitative research methods with a descriptive approach. The theory used is New Media and Internet theory, Social Media theory, and Marketing Communication theory. The study results explain that the use of Instagram significantly facilitates the spread of messages quickly and reaches more people. The content on the Instagram account @prodi.penerbitan.polimedia follows the institution's image but still has to be packaged in an attractive style and design and has new value.

SOCIAL MEDIA LITERACY COUNSELING FOR PROSPECTIVE PROPAGATORS TO THWART HOAX INFORMATION

As social media users, university students often receive hoax news from social media platforms, such as Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Vlog and Whatsapp group. In this connection, they are expected not to forward hoax messages to fellow social media users so that the spread of hoax messages can be stopped at a university student level. To that end, this Dedication to the Public tries to provide counseling to students of the Faculty of Propagation and Communication at State Islamic University (UIN) Walisongo in Semarang. The method used to carry out the activity is counseling since the participants are students who are studying propagation and communication sciences. Therefore, many of them have a basic knowledge of propagation science which is necessary for them to become propagators in the future. More than 50 students, who are mostly students of the Faculty of Propagation and Communication and campus press activists of UIN Walisongo, participated in this counseling. This counseling ran dynamically through a discussion between the participants and source persons comprising a Central Java senior journalist, a commissioner of the Central Java Chapter of the Indonesia Broadcast Commission, and a lecturer of the Faculty of Propagation and Communication at UIN Walisongo. Among the result of the counseling is that the participants have understanding about the danger of spreading hoax news. The awareness not to spread hoax news is very important since the participants of the counseling are prospective propagators who also study communication science and are groomed to have a skill in producing propagation messages to the public. The participants are grateful for the counseling since it has broadened their outlook to understand the danger of hoax information.

Research on the Phenomenon of Moral Defects in Social Media and Its Influence on People

The unethical use of the social media in Sierra Leone is a concern amongst the citizens of the country and the international community. This publication looks at the unethical use of the social media and its effect on the people of Sierra Leone. The objective of the study is to investigate the possible causes and effects of unethical use of the social media on the people of Sierra Leone. Mode of data collection was through designed questionnaire and in some quarter, mobile phone interviews. Causes and effects were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. Research work shows that the media is unethically used in the following ways in Sierra Leone: spread of hate messages, spread of false news, spread of immorality, gateway for robbery and gateway for examinations malpractices. These unethical uses are seen to be caused by: Political ill intentions, high rate of illiteracy in the country, Poor media monitoring and poor media policy enforcement. The effects of these unethical uses of the social media were seen to be alarming. The spread of false news and examinations malpractices in schools and colleges were very strong. This strength undermines the wellbeing of peaceful citizens and the educational goals of the country. Spread of hate messages, immorality and robbery had strong effects that go against our moral values in the country. Recommendations were submitted to help enhance sanity in media practice in the country.

Utilization of Instagram: Efforts to Introduce Publishing Study Program and Publishing Works to the Community

This article discusses the selection of Instagram as a promotional medium in introducing the Creative Media State Polytechnic Publishing study program and publishing works. Information such as photos or videos of work products, pictures of learning activities, and other activities added to the Instagram account. This information can be seen by followers and can get a response or input directly. The study used qualitative research methods with a descriptive approach. The theory used is New Media and Internet theory, Social Media theory, and Marketing Communication theory. The study results explain that the use of Instagram significantly facilitates the spread of messages quickly and reaches more people. The content on the Instagram account @prodi.penerbitan.polimedia follows the institution's image but still has to be packaged in an attractive style and design and has new value.

I Have to Choose This University: Understanding Perceived Usefulness of Word of Mouth (WOM) in Choosing Universities among Students of Higher Education

ABSTRACT For decades, Word of Mouth (WOM) has been popularized as the most powerful form of marketing communication. However, there is scant evidence that validates its powerfulness from the receivers’ perspective. The study examined the powerfulness of WOM by testing its perceived usefulness in choosing Universities from 358 undergraduate students from the public university. Data were analyzed by using Structural Equation Modeling and the findings indicate that students choose Universities through the influence of WOM. Therefore, the University should focus on delivering quality services that influence the spread of positive WOM messages by its current students to prospective students.

A trust management framework using forest fire model to propagate emergency messages in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV)

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) finds a prime application in road safety via emergency message transmission which helps drivers take an intelligent decision on the road. However, as malicious nodes can pose serious challenges, particularly on highway traffic, trust management is essential for excluding malicious nodes from the network. In order to transfer emergency messages efficiently, we consider different communities among the nodes in the network based on their social activities and interests. In this paper, we propose a novel nature-inspired forest fire model for the selection of minimum number of broadcaster nodes in the network for the dissemination of emergency messages. The proposed model maps the spread of emergency messages in the network to the spread of wildfire in a forest, and the key factors for message transmission are established by analyzing the forest fire model. Finally, the proposed model decides whether or not to relay the message based on the nodes' trust value, which is calculated using behavioral parameters. Thus, all the nodes with less trust value can be considered as malicious nodes and effectively excluded from the network using the trust values. Experiments were carried out, and the findings revealed that the proposed system was very resilient to a variety of network conditions, and that the selected minimal number of special nodes was better capable of propagating the emergency message throughout the network.

Informal Economy and Peacebuilding Efforts among Muslim and Christian Communities during Communal Conflicts in Ambon

Communal conflicts that happened in Ambon, eastern part of Indonesia more than 20 years ago still reserve a lot of lessons to unveil. One of the least discussed issues is the roles of economic exchanges among diverse community members in bringing peace from below. This article tries to capture the interreligious interactions (Muslim and Christian) among buyers and sellers in areas considered as border space during the conflicts from 1999 to 2004. It showcases the intertwin of everyday peacebuilding efforts through trade and the spread of peace messages among those involved in the exchange practices. This research employed qualitative research methods using ethnographic strategy with in-depth interview, observation, and library study. Data was collected from 2016-2019 including 10-month intensive fieldwork. The article discusses that social networks and cultural ties embedded in the economic drivers of trade-related activities arguably set the foundation for everyday peacebuilding. In conclusion, economic transactions allowed interethnic, intervillage, and interreligious interactions to take place, eliminated distrust among the traders, and potentially extended peace message narratives at the micro level such as among family members.

Examining the Pro-Eating Disorders Community on Twitter Via the Hashtag #proana: Statistical Modeling Approach.

BackgroundThere is increasing concern around communities that promote eating disorders (Pro-ED) on social media sites through messages and images that encourage dangerous weight control behaviors. These communities share group identity formed through interactions between members and can involve the exchange of “tips,” restrictive dieting plans, extreme exercise plans, and motivating imagery of thin bodies. Unlike Instagram, Facebook, or Tumblr, the absence of adequate policy to moderate Pro-ED content on Twitter presents a unique space for the Pro-ED community to freely communicate. While recent research has identified terms, themes, and common lexicon used within the Pro-ED online community, very few have been longitudinal. It is important to focus upon the engagement of Pro-ED online communities over time to further understand how members interact and stay connected, which is currently lacking.ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to explore beyond the common messages of Pro-ED on Twitter to understand how Pro-ED communities get traction over time by using the hashtag considered to symbolize the Pro-ED movement, #proana. Our focus was to collect longitudinal data to gain a further understanding of the engagement of Pro-ED communities on Twitter.MethodsDescriptive statistics were used to identify the preferred tweeting style of Twitter users (either as mentioning another user in a tweet or without) as well as their most frequently used hashtag, in addition to #proana. A series of Mann Whitney U tests were then conducted to compare preferred posting style across number of followed, followers, tweets, and favorites. This was followed by linear models using a forward step-wise approach that were applied for Pro-ED Twitter users to examine the factors associated with their number of followers.ResultsThis study reviewed 11,620 Pro-ED Twitter accounts that posted using the hashtag #proana between September 2015 and July 2018. These profiles then underwent a 2-step screening of inclusion and exclusion criteria to reach the final sample of 967 profiles. Over 90% (10,484/11,620) of the profiles were found to have less than 6 tweets within the 34-month period. Most of the users were identified as preferring a mentioning style of tweeting (718/967, 74.3%) over not mentioning (248/967, 25.7%). Further, #proana and #thinspo were used interchangeably to propagate shared themes, and there was a reciprocal effect between followers and the followed.ConclusionsOur analysis showed that the number of accounts followed and number of Pro-ED tweets posted were significant predictors for the number of followers a user has, compared to likes. Our results could potentially be useful to social media platforms to understand which features could help or otherwise curtail the spread of ED messages and activity. Our findings also show that Pro-ED communities are transient in nature, engaging in superficial discussion threads but resilient, emulating cybersectarian behavior.

Construction of Public Opinion about Religious Moderation on NU Online Instagram Accounts (@nuonline_id)

This study tries to describe how NU Online constructs the content of religious moderation in influencing public opinion. Starting from the development of social media in the digital era, which plays a significant role in building public opinion and culture, NU Online uses Instagram (@nuonline_id) to spread the concept of moderation. The spread of the moderation message aims to maintain the country’s integrity and prevent radicalism or extremism in religion. This research is descriptive qualitative research. The study conducts by online observations of the @nuonline_id Instagram page to detect religious moderation content. This study succeeded in finding the construction of religious moderation on the @nuonline_id account using text analysis (images and text). The study results explain that NU Online carries out the structure of religious moderation in six aspects of life: (a) Aspects of inter-religious relations. In this aspect, NU Online invites Muslims to maintain harmony with people of different religions. (b) Aspects of social life by suggesting the Indonesian people live in harmony with each other as Indonesian citizens. (c) Political factors and state management by asking the government to develop moderation in carrying out their duties. (d) The education aspect is by the inculcation of the moderation concept in the curriculum. (e) Legal aspects and understanding of religious texts encourage Islamic scholars to consider the religious context in establishing laws. (f) Economic factors, taking into economic equity.

Approach to the Christianisation Movement among Orang Asli Muslim in State of Perak, Malaysia

Christian movement in Malaysia has been always a controversial debate among Muslims in Malaysia. Their efforts to Christianize Malaysian people including Orang Asli is regarded as a threat to Islam as a largest religion of Malaysia as well as an official religion of the state. This article attempts to analyze Christian missionary approach to deliver their Gospel messages among Orang Asli Muslim in Perak State of Malaysia, one of the 13 Malaysian states. This study focuses on the Orang Asli villages in Gopeng, Kampar and Tapah districts in Perak Darul Ridzuan. Data were collected through in-depth interviews using a semi-structured interview method conducted with six study participants as this is a qualitative research using case study design. The case study was conducted to examine in depth the phenomena related to the Christianization movement carried out by Christian activists through the experience of preachers who have been actively involved in preaching for more than 10 years in Orang Asli villages in Perak. The study found that Christian activities use a specific approach to attract the interest of the Muslim Orang Asli community to Christianity. Such an approach is a planned and structured strategy to win the heart of the Orang Asli. They carried out the effort so pragmatically and convincingly that the Orang Asli Muslims people could be influenced by the religion and eventually left Islam to embrace Christianity. The study also found that, the approach used to influence the Orang Asli community in Perak is the arts approach through entertainment, contextualization approach, humanitarian aid approach, psychological approach through the spread of love and affection message, and leadership cadres approach by appointing priests from the Orang Asli community.

Reconsidering evidence of moral contagion in online social networks.

The ubiquity of social media use and the digital data traces it produces has triggered a potential methodological shift in the psychological sciences away from traditional, laboratory-based experimentation. The hope is that, by using computational social science methods to analyse large-scale observational data from social media, human behaviour can be studied with greater statistical power and ecological validity. However, current standards of null hypothesis significance testing and correlational statistics seem ill-suited to markedly noisy, high-dimensional social media datasets. We explore this point by probing the moral contagion phenomenon, whereby the use of moral-emotional language increases the probability of message spread. Through out-of-sample prediction, model comparisons and specification curve analyses, we find that the moral contagion model performs no better than an implausible XYZ contagion model. This highlights the risks of using purely correlational evidence from large observational datasets and sounds a cautionary note for psychology's merge with big data.

Faith, liberty, destiny, and the shaping of early American identity

The discovery of America, which was in itself a fateful event in European history, coincided with the crucial transformations taking place in the religious sphere. The development of printing technology, the creation of national translations of the Bible, the rethinking of the established forms of religiosity — all these innovations contributed to the creation of a special religious and religio-political climate of the era. England, which became one of the most successful colonial powers, was at the same time a country experiencing these religious transformations in an especially profound manner. Having proclaimed its ecclesiastical independence from Rome earlier than many other countries, England became a space for an intensive search for a new religious identity and a melting pot of various proto-messianic concepts. In addition, the competition of these new religious doctrines, existing in the shadow of potential and actual state-sanctioned oppression of dissidents, has created a specific environment that makes the issue of political freedom especially relevant and pertinent to the context of Christianity. Having received additional development in America and combined with an increased spread of the anti-colonial nationalist message, all these ideological streams could give a start to one of the most remarkable aspects of early American socio-political thought and identity, within which liberalism, republicanism, providentialism, messianism, and Christian religiosity are woven into a single composition. The debate about the influence of this ideological complex on the development of American identity and statehood continues to this day, sometimes leading to conflicting assessments. However, it seems that this phenomenon is, in one way or another, a remarkable factor in American history, which, to some extent, remains a relevant topic of discussion for modern America.

The ethical dimension of public relations in Europe: Digital channels, moral challenges, resources, and training

Digital communication tools and practices improve the spread and impact of organisational messages. Quite often, however, they also pose moral problems. This article examines how often public relations practitioners encounter moral issues in their day-to-day work, how they assess digital communication tools and practices in terms of ethics, and the resources on which they rely to tackle moral challenges. Four research questions were addressed in an online survey among 2,324 practitioners who work in PR departments of organisations or in PR agencies across Europe. Results show that PR practitioners face more moral challenges in their daily work than they have faced in the past. Regarding digital communication tools and practices, they report moral concerns especially related to using bots, exploiting personal data for big-data analyses, paying social media influencers, and using sponsored content. Personal values and beliefs are the most important resource for dealing with moral issues—whether because only a minority of practitioners has participated in any formal ethics training within the past three years, or because existing ethical guidelines are outdated. Results call for the development of ethical guidelines that can provide explicit advice in the area of digital communication. Furthermore, structured training programs and ethics courses in graduate programs are needed to enhance practitioners’ ethical knowledge.

Теоретические основы прогнозирования пользовательских настроений в социальных сетях

Analyzed is the problem of predicting the mood of users in social networks. The properties of social network information objects are investigated, and a method for collecting and processing social data for forecasting is presented. The goal of this study is to prove or disprove the possibility of predicting user sentiment in social networks. A discrete model of the social network has been compiled. The theoretical foundations of forecasting are formulated based on the statistical characteristics of the discrete model, as well as algorithms for searching and systematizing information objects. A method is proposed and described that allows you to predict the reaction of users to a message published in a social network. A hypothesis about the possibility of predicting mood in social networks is formulated and proved. The possibility of forecasting user sentiment in social networks is proved. A new method that allows you to predict the reaction of users to a published news item is presented based on the principles of machine learning. The results of the work can be applied in the field of small and medium-sized businesses when directly searching for a target audience to increase the profitability of the enterprise. The development of sentiment analysis methods will allow planning measures to contain or speed up the spread of messages. Also, the application value in developing a forecasting model may lie in the development of news sources or identifying trends. The scientific significance of the work lies in the presentation of a method that allows predicting the reaction of social network users to the published news. The results of this work can be used to improve the performance of social networks and to solve the problem of “cold” start (what to show to new users).

Management of Information Communication Mechanism in Colleges and Universities — Based on the Perspective of WeChat Work Group

WeChat is a convenient means of information and communication nowadays, which can provide functions such as group chat, public platform, friends circle, and message spreading. WeChat group is widely used in the working environment of colleges and universities, greatly improving the communication efficiency as well as making up for the shortcomings of the formal communication mechanism, but it also causes problems like inefficiency and poor security of information management. A sound and efficient information and communication mechanism for organizations could be established by taking the formal communication network as the leading role and strengthening the management of WeChat group.

TSIRP: A Temporal Social Interactions-Based Routing Protocol in Opportunistic Mobile Social Networks

With the increasing number of smart device users, data transmission between users is becoming more important, and a network architecture called opportunistic mobile social network (OMSN) is gaining attention. However, routing in OMSNs is a challenging problem due to the frequent disconnection between nodes and the absence of paths from the source to the destination. It results in a complex topology and a low packet transmission success rate. Therefore, we propose a novel routing algorithm called the temporal social interactions-based routing protocol (TSIRP) for solving the problem of low network performance due to the improper selection of message relay nodes. First, we focus on the temporal context of social interactions. Specifically, at a certain time of the day, a person has specific people with whom the person usually interacts (e.g., workers usually meet co-workers during working hours; students usually meet their classmates during class). Based on temporal social interactions between nodes, potential forwarding metrics are proposed and calculated for each time of the day to make forwarding decisions. Second, we propose a new scheme to control the message spreading rate, which allows achieving a balance between delivery latency and overhead ratio. In addition, an analytical model is also designed using an absorbing Markov chain to estimate the performance of TSIRP. Simulations were also conducted, and the results indicate that TSIRP can achieve better performance than existing routing protocols in terms of packet delivery ratio, delivery latency, network overhead ratio, and average hop count.